Page 65 of We Could Be So Good
Maybe the past week of kissing on the sofa and in the hallway and against the icebox and just about everywhere else in this rattrap has made Andy confident, because he reaches for Nick with a sure hand. Nick groans. This isn’t going to last. “Get rid of your underwear,” he pleads. And then: “Can I touch you?”
He wants to touch Andy anywhere he can reach, hungry for every point of contact. Andy seems to feel the same, his hands exploring, his breath catching whenever Nick likes something. And Nick likes everything. He’s thought too much about this, imagined Andy in every possible way, and the reality of him flushed and naked in Nick’s bed, the reality of his hands on Nick’s body, completely undoes him.
They’re both too desperate to have any finesse. It’s been a week of buildup, a week of hard-ons left to subside, and now Nick has to shelve about a dozen big ideas and instead grab them both together in one hand and hope for the best.
Andy doesn’t seem to mind. He looks like he’s being dismantled, taken apart atom by atom, and Nick doesn’t know how that can be when he’s the one dissolving into nothing but want and need and too much fondness to even think about.
Nick rolls them so Andy is on top, then hooks a leg around Andy’s hip to keep him close. This makes Andy’s damp hair fall in his eyes, and into Nick’s eyes, too.
He moves his hips so they rock together, and then after that there’s nothing but gasped names and soft words, the two of them sheltered together in a warm safe place.
***
Afterward, Nick lies boneless and warm, Andy half on top of him and apparently insensate. His face is smashed into the pillow beside Nick’s head, an arm and a leg flung heavily across Nick’s body.
Nick reaches out and gropes around on his nightstand for a pack of cigarettes. Andy must hear the click of the lighter because he lifts his hand and makes a grabbing motion. Nick puts thecigarette into his hand and Andy shifts over, sitting up against the headboard.
Nick cranes his neck to look. Andy is still flushed, pink and rosy from what they did together. His hair is rumpled and his jawline and neck are red from rubbing against Nick’s stubble. He looks gently debauched.
“You’re staring,” Andy says.
“Mm-hmm.”
Andy rolls his eyes.
“Want me to stop?” Nick asks.
“Knock yourself out,” Andy says, making a sort ofhelp yourselfgesture.
When they first met, Nick thought Andy was at best generically handsome, like models in the Sears catalog or ads for soap. He thought Andy’s looks were bland, forgettable, boring WASPy straight-nosed pale-skinned dullness.
And then he started to notice the other things: the way Andy’s ears stick out a little, the way his smile tilts to the side, how his expression never stays the same for more than five seconds and instead acts like a television screen, displaying everything that passes through his head.
None of that is in the least boring.
Now when he looks at Andy, he doesn’t even see his component parts unless he makes himself pay attention. Instead it all coalesces into the shape of Nick’s favorite person. Even when he looks at the parts he doesn’t usually get to see—strong shoulders covered in the freckles of a dozen sunburns, the soft insides of his thighs, pink nipples and a dusting of dark blond chest hair—it’s all still Andy.
“Jesus,” says Andy, looking away. Another part of him that Nick doesn’t usually get to see is taking renewed interest.
“You’ve been looking at me for weeks,” Nick points out, stealing the cigarette from Andy’s hand.
“You walk around half naked! It’s impossible not to look.”
“Is that so?” Nick crawls over Andy’s lap and stubs out the cigarette in the ashtray. “You like what you saw?”
“Fishing for compliments is beneath you,” Andy says, even as he smooths his hands down Nick’s shoulders.
“I want to know what made you have your gay awakening.” He waggles his eyebrows. “I want to know what about me is so powerfully attractive that it contributed to your degeneracy.”
Andy suddenly looks serious. “I don’t think I’m gay.”
Nick gestures at Andy’s hard-on. “Coulda fooled me, champ.”
Andy smacks his hand. “I mean I’m notonlygay. I definitely like women. And I like men, too.”
Nick nods. “Okay, fair enough.”
“I just mean that I wasn’t living a lie or whatever. But if you really want to know what about you made me consider whether I like men, and we’re going to pretend that the fact that you’re my best friend has nothing to do with it, then it’s this spot here.” He touches the dip in Nick’s clavicle.
