I giggled along with Ronnie as Jere shrugged nonchalantly.
“My goal for having a body like this is strength,” he said and turned an eye to me. “Anyone fucks with either of you again and I’ll put them in their place. Danny can tell you who ran the show in high school, and it wasn’t the bullies. Am I right?”
I tried speaking around the sudden lump in my throat as he leaned in, his eyes blazing, the black pits of his pupils expanding to swallow me whole. He got close, close enough I thought he was going to kiss me in front of Ronnie and everyone else. Time did that thing again where everything slowed down and all I could focus on was the pink shininess of his lips and the hard cut of his jaw.
He didn’t kiss me.
“You’re safe now that I’m here,” he said, his attention dropping to my lips for an instant as if he were thinking the same thing. “You believe me, right?”
“Yeah.” I managed and licked my lips, ready for his kiss.
It never came. He seemed satisfied by my answer and moved away an inch, but it felt like miles. I saw the questions in Ronnie’s eyes, and knew she was wondering if she was seeing things that weren’t there.
“And you,” he said pointing to Ronnie with a plastic fork. “If anyone bothers you, come to me and I will take care of it.”
“Oh boy, aren’t you chivalrous?” Her tease was subdued as if she were turning over things in her head.
He sat back against his chair with a frown. “No, just a decent human being.”
She made a sound that let me know she was in love with him already. Which isn't surprising. He could be very charming with little effort.
Lunch ended up being a relaxing affair as we ate our sandwiches accompanied by a comfortable summer breeze. Jere talked about all the assholes he’d put in their places at his previous place of employment. I enjoyed his stories, if only because they filled a void in my life during the time we couldn’t be together. Somehow, and I wasn’t sure exactly how, our chat had turned into a detailed list of all the reasons Mr. Rogers would be able to liftMjolnir, because, hello, who was more pure than him? But it was silly conversations with friends and unimportant, simple things that were the best kind of medicine.
When we were back home, I crashed on the couch for a few hours, the walk sapping my allotted strength for the day. But the journey was worth it, the little feather of hope that drifted around my heart collecting to hatch a dove.
Using my walker, I shuffled into the kitchen where Jere was tying a garbage bag.
I took him in with his shirt cut off at the shoulders with the gym logo on it, and the baseball cap turned backwards, his hair curling around the edges. In high school, he’d been the cool guy everyone wanted to be around and all the girls—and closeted gay boys—wanted to date. He was still the cool guy to me, but I never thought he could bemycool guy, the kind I got to brag about and sing to the high heavens how lucky I was to have landed someone like him.
But we weren’t there yet, were we? We hadn’t even kissed, never mind the coital gymnastics that would seal the deal. I sat down at the kitchen table, my rollercoaster of emotions wearing me out more than the walk had.
“Why don’t you want to kiss me?” I blurted. I was sure I could have put it more eloquently, but the point would have been the same. I was desperate to taste his lips.
It had only been a few days since we’d decided to see where our attractions would take us but every night he slept in my bed, cuddled me, his woody pressing into my ass. Sometimes, as he helped me with everyday tasks and got close, I thought this was it, he was finally going to kiss me. But he never did. It left me confused and doubting he wanted me in a sexual way. Maybe he’d confused his need to protect me for something else.
He stopped what he was doing and frowned at me, his brows knitting. “I want to kiss you.”
“And yet, you haven’t. After all the things you’ve said about us, you haven’t kissed me yet.”
A ghost of a smirk pulled at his lips. “Do you want me to kiss you?”
“Well, yeah. I mean, that’s what people who are attracted to each other do,” I said snidely.
Jere was a complicated person. I knew him well, but every now and then it was hard to read him. Most times it took a little more effort than normal to understand what he was trying to communicate. He dropped what he was doing, closed the distance between us in two strides of his massive thighs, and dropped to his knees in front of me. He pushed his big body between my legs and pulled the chair into him so we were close.
Really, really close.
It got hard to breathe all of the sudden, his lips hovering an inch from mine. I could smell my fancy soap mingled with his natural manly scent and feel the heat coming off his body. We’d gotten close many times, but I was keenly aware of certain things now, like how hard he was against me, as if he were packing steel under his skin, and how rough his two-day old stubble looked.
His lips pulled up into a cockeyed grin. “Do you want me to kiss you like this?”
Before I could respond, he pecked me on the lips in a closed-mouth kiss, a little explosion firing off at the sudden contact.
“Or, how about like this?” he purred and kissed me again.
The kiss was deeper, lingering against my mouth as he pulled me into him by the bend of my knees. He seized the opportunity as I gasped and touched the tip of his tongue against mine for the purposes of experimentation. The kiss wasn’t overly invasive, but thorough and, Lord have mercy, he knew how to kiss. Some guys dove right in and though I liked sloppy, tongue-down-my-throat-kissing as much as the next gay man, I wanted to work up to it.
I nodded, my breath shuddering through me. “Like that.”
