“I haven’t changed at all. From the beginning I told you you could fuck someone at work, I just never mentioned that there was always a secret caveat that it could only ever be with me.”
“You’re absolutely, perfectly insane Jeon Wootek.”
“I’m your insane, Carey Novak.”
“You sure are…”
I turn the volume back up and Blur sings to us about ‘Girls & Boys’ as I watch the ocean roll past.
The road curves and dips, following the natural line of the coast. And for the rest of the trip, Tek drives with one hand on the wheel, the other resting on the center console between us. Every now and then he turns it over, palm up, and I see it as so much more than a cute invitation. Because I know, from my perfect man of relatively few words, that it is an open promise that he’ll always be there.
Eleven months later
“Who the fuck has a brand launch in February?” Tek mumbles as he tries to push himself closer into my side.
“You’ve known about this for months. Why are you making it my problem that you chose to not wear the right jacket?”
“Fine. I’ll rephrase. Who decides to have a brand launch on a rooftop in Portland in the middle of fucking February?”
“My god,” I sigh and wrap my arm around his shoulders. He turns into me slightly and buries his hands beneath my coat. “How are you thirty-five?”
“How did they not tell us—”
“Exactly where we’d be?”
“Shut up.”
“You know that invitation? The one that’s been on the fridge for the past three weeks? The one with the address on it? The thing that’s the reason we knew exactly where to come tonight?”
“I told you to shut up.” With a heavy bottom lip, Tek sulks into my neck. “Can I not just whine and use it as an excuse to get closer to you?”
“So now you need an excuse to touch me?”
He kisses my neck. “Don’t twist my words.”
“Then don’t make them so easy to twist, Oppa.”
Like it has for over a year now, when I say that word just right, it always garners me his full attention. In the back corner of a downtown Portland rooftop bar, Tek kisses me. There’s no hesitation, no question or shame, just his half-frozen lips against mine as a few hundred people surround us and music fills the air.
Without thinking, I twist to tug him closer and my hip grazes over his belt.
“Ah fuck,” I hiss, and cower away from him.
He reaches out for me; “Shit, I’m sorry.”
“No, It’s my fault. I keep forgetting.” Pushing my jacket back I lift up the hem of my sweater and undershirt to reveal the brand new trio of dermal piercings that run along my left hip bone. “They’re not bleeding. They’ll be fine.”
Tek presses his hand against the bottom of my stomach and digs his pinkie into the band of my underwear. “I didn’t think you’d turn into such a pin cushion.”
“Are you serious? Even after learning what piercings I already had, you still insisted on me being certified. So you only have yourself to blame.”
“I don’t mind. I could be blamed for far worse things.” With a devious look in his eye, he raises his hand up over my belly barto flick at one of my nipple rings. “But I’d say the most surprising part is how fucking hot it is to watch you do this to yourself.”
With a beguiling grin of my own, I run my tongue piercing back and forth across my front teeth. “I can’t wait till you let me pierce you so I can feel what it’s like to have a metal bar forced downmythroat.”
He tugs on my nipple ring and my eyes roll back. “You know that’s never gonna happen.”
“Why not? I know how much you love all of mine.”
