Page 192 of Two Marlboros

Ash finished swallowing the last bite and wiped his hands with his napkin. I, on the other hand, took another bite of the sandwich that I had only half eaten, still with a blender in my stomach that unsettled me with every bite. It was spinningslowly, but it was spinning, and I didn’t understand why. Was it because of that professional slip I had made? Or because of something else?

“You know, there’s something I’ve been wanting to ask you for a while,” Ash exclaimed, out of nowhere, a smirk plastered on his face. “What are your plans for the after-party?”

I looked at him quizzically and swallowed in the process.

“Party? What party?”

He chuckled, “Nathan’s little party. You know, the one he wants to have in a few days to say goodbye to all of us.”

I dropped the sandwich on the plate, picked up the glass and downed two sips of Sprite.

“Oh, that one. What plans should I have?”

Ash sighed, but his sigh soon turned into a giggle.

“At your age, do I really have to explain what kind of plans I was thinking about?”

The blender in my stomach began to go crazy. It started spinning at supersonic speed, and suddenly what was on my plate made me lose all appetite. I grabbed the Sprite and pulled it closer to the glass to pour some.

“Come on, Alan, he even came out of this investigation clean, now you really have no more excuses. Besides, I know you’ve been wanting to bed him for two months.”

I gasped and some Sprite ended up on the table, so with a sudden gesture I put the can back upright on the table. Ash laughed heartily this time, and I thought about how many times he had pictured that scene in his head. It had certainly gone as scripted.

The two officers beside us had turned away for a moment, and I hoped it was because of the Sprite and not because of what my colleague had said.

“I don’t...” I tried to retort, but the words died in my throat. The blender was going up my throat and had prevented me fromcompleting the sentence. Or had I not completed it for another reason?

“‘I don’t’ what? You don’t want to sleep with him? No one believes that. I’ve seen you look at him, you know. You want me to believe that you’ve never had a wan-”

“Okay, okay, alright, that’s enough. And keep your voice down!”

I abruptly moved my head from right to left, but no one, not even the two policemen sitting next to us, seemed to have paid any attention to what Ash had said. I felt myself suddenly warm and suspected that my cheeks had flushed, without my being able to do anything about it.

“Oh, embarrassed like that you’re almost sweet,” he said in a falsetto, then patted my cheek.

I pushed him away and let out too many breaths, then rubbed my hands over my face. Ash’s words rang in my head, and certain memories darted through my mind so fast that I couldn’t stop them. On more than one occasion, in fact, the shower had turned into a moment of personal pleasure - and Nathan had been in those fantasies. And the fact that he had been there - not Oliver, who was increasingly taking on the features of a memory - had forced my brain to bury those moments under a heap of embarrassment and shame, hoping to forget them.

“Okay, let’s hear it,” I said, in an attempt to stop thinking about it. “What did you have in mind?”

Ash crossed his hands and stretched out his arms to stretch, as if he had been waiting a long time to be able to give that speech. I kept wondering why I had asked him that question, while thoughts I couldn’t catch chased each other in my fantasies.

“Well, you’ll certainly have to be the last one to leave, maybe with an excuse, like driving him home. If he asks you up, that’s it. Or if not, you could go somewhere together and be a couple.”

Nathan asking me up after an evening alone, the apartment door closing behind us, our gazes lost in each other...

After all, the investigation was over, and it had taken with it that huge boulder that had stood between Nathan and me each time and forced me to always keep my professional mask up. On more than one occasion it had been a safe harbor to avoid being swept away by the cyclone that was Nathan, but I wondered what it would be like to talk to him barefaced, with no more professional issues in between.

My stomach was still churning. Adding to that feeling was an unusual heartbeat - it was pumping blood where it shouldn’t, certainly not on a coffee break. There was excitement, but there was also... fear.

Because, yes, I had long wanted to make love to Nathan (and not “sleep with him”, my mind reiterated), there was no point in denying it anymore; and thinking about it so clearly, unfiltered and uncensored made me feel more than a creak in that dam that dammed up my feelings for him. I imagined myself trying to plug its leaks, covering those cracks with my hands.

“It’s a very tempting scenario, but I’m not so sure it can happen.”

He rolled his eyes. “And why not?”

“Because...” I began, unable to finish the sentence. Yeah, why not?

Ash opened his mouth to say something, but only sighed, then shook his head.

---