“This ceiling is weird,” Roman said, and without willing his body to do it, Yale lay down next to Roman, his legs still hanging off the end of the mattress. There was nothing particularly odd about the ceiling. It was just stucco. Roman had finished his wine; he tossed the plastic cup to the floor. He said, “I’m messed up.”
“No, you’re not.” Yale turned his head in that direction, hoped Roman could see the earnestness in his eyes.
Roman reached out and, with just his fingertips, touched Yale’s neck, his green sweater. Yale stopped breathing, just watched Roman’s face flickering blue and yellow in the television light. He should tell him to stop. He should get up. But maybe this was the first time Roman had ever done something so bold. Maybe, if Yale rebuffed him, it would be the last. And while he lay there paralyzed, Roman ran his fingers down Yale’s arm and onto the outer seam of his Dockers. Yale felt pinned to the bed with sugar, with alcohol, with afternoon languor. With, to be honest, an erection that was now straining against his boxers and his left thigh.
Roman looked terrified, and so young, and Yale took the hand off his leg but instead of letting it go he held it, twined his fingers through Roman’s long, pale ones. They faced each other now, and Yale realized no one had touched him, not really, since his life had fallen apart. Teresa had hugged him when he came home from Wisconsin that day. Fiona had hugged him at Terrence’s funeral. That was it. And being touched was Yale’s weakness, always had been. People joked sometimes about not being held enough as a child, but in Yale’s case it was so terribly literal, like a vitamin deficiency.
Roman whispered: “I don’t know what I want.” He was shaking, or at least his hand was. His glasses, pushed up by the pillow, framed his face unevenly.
Not fifteen minutes ago, Yale had had reasons nothing should happen, but what had they been? Well, he might be infectious. There was that. But did that rule out everything?
He wanted the television off. He knew that much. This required moving, which he did: He dropped Roman’s hand, propelled himself off the bed, hit the power button with his sweaty thumb.
His feet felt unsteady on the carpet. He remembered the night in December when he’d kept walking past Julian’s apartment. It had maybe, maybe saved his life.
And yet, right now, he wanted to do the opposite of everything he’d ever done before. He looked at the door and expected to find himself walking toward it—but instead he was sitting sideways on the edge of the bed, one leg up and one leg down. Roman sat up, leaned back against him, so that the back of his head nestled under Yale’s chin. Yale moved his hand down Roman’s shirt, found his fly, found his way into the fly. Just his hand, just his right hand, drawing Roman out of the top of his briefs, and then his left hand on Roman’s chest, holding him in place, feeling Roman’s heart shake his ribcage. He rubbed him slowly, until Roman began rising to meet his strokes, and then Yale sped up, squeezed harder.
When was the last time he gave a full hand job? Charlie wasn’t much of a fan, although certainly Charlie had been the last, but it might have been a year, two years. With the angle—Roman pressed close against him, gasping, almost choking, their shoulders aligned, hips aligned—it wasn’t all that different in technique from doing it to himself.
“Relax,” he whispered, and Roman leaned back into him more.
Yale’s own erection pressed into the base of Roman’s spine, but really that wasn’t the point. The point was, Roman seemed to need this—how much, Yale couldn’t know, but he could guess—and Yale needed it too.
Roman braced himself, his hands on Yale’s knees, and with a low wail he came onto the front of the dresser, onto the shallow drawers and brass pulls, right below the television.
And then before either of them could even exhale, Roman bolted up and grabbed a black T-shirt from the floor and began wiping at the dresser drawers like he was terrified someone would walk in and see it. “Sit down,” Yale said, and he took the shirt from Roman’s hand and mopped things up himself. When he finished—rolling the shirt into a ball and tucking it into the corner of the suitcase—Roman was facedown on the bed, arms out crucifix-style.
Yale said, “Do you want me to stay, or go?”
He had no idea which he’d have chosen himself, but Roman said, into the sheets, “I think I want to be alone.”
Yale went back to his own room and turned on the shower and thought, vaguely, of jerking off, but by the time the water had warmed up, he didn’t want to. He felt his groin for lymph nodes, decided he was too dizzy to be in the shower, lay in bed and thought about trying to find a TV station that wasn’t about to show Reagan’s giant head. He fell asleep without eating dinner.
* * *
—
Yale was at a small, round table in the breakfast room—hung over, his temples throbbing, his mouth fuzzy—when Mrs. Cherry greeted Roman at the door, ushered him straight to the seat across from Yale. Roman looked at the ground, and then he picked up the Door County Advocate and stared at it, his ears red.
Yale had been asking himself all morning what the hell was wrong with him, what he’d been thinking, but he figured it was his job to act normal, to signal that everything was okay, that healthy gay men did not need to wake up the next morning consumed by self-loathing. He said, “We have to get the details today. As fascinated as we all are by Ranko trivia.”
Maybe he should’ve said something else, something kinder. Maybe Roman thought Yale was avoiding the subject too. But it was dawning on him how long the rest of the visit and the ride home would be, how awkward work would be next week. He’d been so distracted by questions of infection, so satisfied with his answers to them, that he’d forgotten, last night, the more mundane issues: remorse, attachment, expectation, embarrassment.
Mrs. Cherry brought them toast. She said, “Wasn’t it beautiful last night, what the president said? It was just poetry.”
Yale said, “I’m sure it was.”
“You didn’t watch?”
“I did,” Roman said. “You’re right. Poetry.”
* * *
—
Roman stared out the side window all the way to Nora’s house. Yale thought of apologizing. But it could plant the seed that he had abused his power. And worse: It would reinforce whatever notions Roman had that sex was something to be ashamed of, apologized for. It could put the kid back five years.
Was it Roman’s inexperience and guilt that had sucked Yale in? Or would he have succumbed to anyone in that moment? He didn’t think he would have. He wouldn’t have been drawn to someone who could hurt him.
How funny that Charlie had thought Roman was safe precisely because he was so virginal. Maybe Charlie didn’t know him at all.