Page 205 of Two Marlboros

“I’m feeling a lot of things,” he continued. “And ever since we finished, I feel like I’m missing something, like I have an emptiness inside. No pun intended.”

A half smile broke out on my face, and not because of the joke, but because I understood him all too well. I took his hand and kissed it, then embedded it in mine. His fingers had warmed up and were hot at that moment.

“I feel that way, too. And I don’t mean sexually...” I whispered, and moved our hands over my heart, “...but here.”

The expression on his face relaxed and made room for a smile, not only on his lips but also in his eyes. He moved closerto me and kissed me, loosened the intertwining of our hands and one put it behind the back of my head to pull me to him. His lips had a vague, light tobacco aroma, which I had not noticed in previous kisses. I tasted it and felt it so mine, and I lingered on his lips because I wanted to feel it again, so I slowed my pace and savored his tongue, because that aroma I longed for to enter me, to become mine as he had been, as I wanted him to be. And in my mind’s eye I saw again my reflection as a man in love, as a man who had not only the taste of tobacco on the tip of his tongue, but also those three words pawing to come out, because Nathan deserved them more than anything else. But perhaps they would have frightened him away or, worse, caused him to give up that opportunity to eat the world that seemed so important to him, and I on the other hand, if he had stayed, would have become responsible for his happiness in the Big Apple, a burden that would have been unfair to both him and me.

So, when that kiss ended, I looked into his eyes and decided that I would keep those words to myself, at least for the moment, or perhaps forever, with the consolation that nothing could stop me from loving him even from a distance, in a silent way.

Suddenly he shifted his gaze to his torso and traced with his fingers a trail that started from his pubis and went up to his chest. For a moment, his mouth contracted into an expression between annoyance and disgust.

“I guess I need a shower. Does the invitation still stand?”

I took a closer look at the trail he had followed and realized only then that he had come without a condom, a detail I had forgotten that had forced him to get dirty. The next moment my fingers were on his belly, there where the slick was widest, and the touch of that now lukewarm and viscous liquid trapped my thoughts into wanting to taste Nathan not only with passionate kisses. That idea embarrassed me, so I withdrew my hand and tried to dissimulate.

“Sorry, my bad. Shall we go?”

His face broke into a smile, and I breathed a sigh of relief. I stood in front of the bed and stretched out a hand to help him do the same; and when he stood up and I found him naked in front of me, I felt a thrill from that sexual charge he exuded, the same one that likely had driven me, from the beginning, to buzz around him for one reason or another. I let it pass and watched him walk toward the bathroom, when my eye fell to the open lube and, further above, to an area of the nightstand that was strangely empty, the same area from which, before leaving, I had removed Oliver’s picture and locked it in the top drawer.

I had taken it without much thought, and stared at it for a long time before the idea of moving it from there took hold in my head. And it had been a fluke, because that drawer was the same one where I also kept the lube, and I had thought about it only because Ash’s words about the after-party had come back to me. So, the thought had appeared, spontaneously, that in that drawer maybe I could keep something else, too, like the picture I was holding in my fingers. A thought that had nothing exceptional about it, but that had made me realize that if the memory of Oliver continued to consume me with guilt, it was only because I allowed it to; and that there was nothing wrong with thinking that Oliver’s smile, the one that had kept me company during those long months, was no longer enough for me. Because the truth was much simpler and equally mundane: I wanted to live, I wanted to love again. So, I had opened that drawer, removed the lubricant for a moment to put the picture flat, put it back where it was, and closed the drawer. It had taken ten months to accomplish that sequence of actions that had seemed something extraordinary at the time.

“Are you coming?”

I looked up at Nathan and smiled as I thought back to those moments where I thought it impossible to fall in love again. He had performed a miracle.

I didn’t let him tell me twice and joined him, then held him close to me and kissed him, meanwhile calling myself stupid for making him wait so long.

We came out of the shower tired and exhausted, veterans of another intercourse that had caught us both a little off guard. For if the first time had been quite predictable (after all, we had come home for a reason), the second had grown slowly, with the growing desire to belong to each other again and at the same time the desire to leave room for romance. But it had been enough for us to wash each other clean, to sweep away the marks of what had happened to bring it back to mind more vividly than ever, and it was a matter of a moment to find ourselves bound again by passion. And although I found it a bit impersonal to do so by looking at each other’s backs, with Nathan that detail had taken on the flavor of an immediate understanding that did not need us to look into each other’s eyes to exist.

I turned on the small bedside light and turned off the ones in the other rooms, lent Nathan one of my pajamas, and, both of us dressed, we stretched out on the bed, under the blankets. I stared at the ceiling and brought a hand to my chest, to find that it was rising and falling in a regular rhythm, that of one who is satiated with the day he has lived and is enjoying a well-deserved rest, and closed my eyes.

We made love. Twice. I still couldn’t believe it. And if it hadn’t been for his departure, I was sure there would have been many more, but I was equally sure that it was his departure that had prompted me to take that step. I thought back to my chat with Ash a few days earlier, to all my insecurities, my indecision.I huffed. But I couldn’t blame myself: if I hadn’t done it before, it was because I didn’t feel ready.

I felt Nathan move and opened my eyes, whereupon he turned to me and barely lifted himself, resting his head on his palm. I looked at him and found him beautiful. I ran my gaze over all the features of his face, which, while it was beginning to have the features of a young adult, still retained the last traces of an adolescence that would soon fade.

“Please don’t look at me like that.”

He chuckled and I frowned. “Meaning?”

“You look like you’d like round three - I’m sorry to tell you, but I have six hours to spend sitting tomorrow.”

I stared at him for a moment and we both burst out laughing, an action I felt like I hadn’t done in ages.

“Anyway, that’s not the look of someone who would like round three.”

Nathan gave me one of his mischievous smirks, and in an instant, I was catapulted back to the memory of his first statement at the station and to the squabble between me and thatirritating boy. God, it seemed like an eternity ago. And it seemed impossible that we had reached that point.

“Oh, no? Then why were you looking at me like that?”

I sighed. I wanted to tell him the truth, what was on my mind, but once again I told myself it wouldn’t be right.

“Because you’re gorgeous.”

He laid on his stomach, holding his weight on his elbows, and brought his face closer to mine.

“So that’s what you were thinking every time I caught you staring at me these past two months?” he whispered.

I was seized with a pang of embarrassment and went back to staring at the ceiling. He had even told me once that I stared at it from time to time. And it had to be said that I had not always done so thinking he was gorgeous - although he was.

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