Authors: Varian Krylov
Dangerously Happy (40 page)
I kissed him. Kissed him again. Drew him close against me. “But I did choose you. You have me. I’m yours. We have us.”
“
That night, while I was touching you . . . I don’t know if you can imagine . . . it was like you were giving me this fragile, ephemeral gift. I was sure, so sure that as soon as you came, as soon as I’d taken away your immediate need, you’d regret it. That those few, fleeting minutes, looking at you, so nervous, so fucking aroused, looking back at me with . . . God, this incredibly vulnerable trust, were all I was going to get with you. I barely dared to do it.”
“
It felt like you were afraid you might break me,” I told him. “You touched me so cautiously. But I came anyway, so ridiculously fast, because I was so fucking turned on by you.”
“
I wanted so badly to kiss you. Even before I touched you. And, God, while I was stroking you. But I didn’t dare.” He laughed. “Because it seemed too intimate. More intimate than touching your cock.” A soft sigh. “Not kissing you, telling you to go, I still can’t believe I had the strength of will to do that. To resist calling you the next day. All that week. I felt like there was this delicate bubble floating through the air, and if it landed in my hand, I would have real, true happiness. But if I reached for it, tried to take hold of it, I’d burst the bubble, and the chance of that happiness would be ruined forever. That happiness felt so, so close, and it felt impossible.”
“
And now?”
He smiled, but his gaze was still melancholy. Almost wounded. “Now I have it. It’s in my hands. But it can still burst.”
“
Is our bubble any more fragile than anyone else’s?”
“
I don’t know.”
“
Because I’m . . . not gay enough?”
“
No. Maybe.”
“
Love. How is me being attracted to women any different than you being attracted to other men? They’re out there, but all I want is to be here, with you.”
Sweet smile.
“
I’ve never felt so perfectly coupled. I didn’t even know that being with someone could feel like this. This good.” I pressed his palm over my heart. “My whole life feels different. I feel different. You’ve made me the best person, given me the best life I could have imagined. There’s no one out there, no man, no woman, who’d have any chance of luring me away from what we have together.”
“
Don’t you . . .”
“
What, love?” I pressed his hand tighter over my heart.
“
Did you want kids?”
“
Yes, actually. I do want kids. Do you?”
“
Yes.” He sounded like he might be about to cry.
“
I know it will be a process. But it’s not impossible, is it?”
“
Didn’t you want to make a baby, and have it be that amazing reflection of you and the person you were with? You know, your eyes, your voice, her laugh, her—”
“
I don’t care about that.”
“
I hate the idea of you giving up something that important. For me.”
“
I mean it. That stuff was never important to me. I just want to be a dad. And I think you’ll be the best father on the planet. Seriously. However we make it happen, we’ll have an amazing family.”
My heart was pumping adrenaline through my body by the liter. I felt high. The woozy, heady thrill of stepping up to the edge of a cliff. For a second, my head felt empty except for a buzzing hum and I felt lost in there, like I’d never find the lyrics I was about to sing or the notes I was about to play. But I leaped anyway.
I stepped up to the mic, wrapped my fingers around it—more to steady myself than anything—and in that still, faintly murmuring crowd I found Dario, standing toward the back but completely focused on me, holding me in that sustaining gaze of his.
“
This will be the last song for tonight. It’s a new song. A confession of love.”
Dario stilled. Like he wasn’t even breathing.
Maybe it was my imagination, my nerves, but everyone else seemed to go suddenly silent. As if the soundtrack to a film had just failed. The people who’d been pouring their drinks or settling in their seats or shedding their sweaters or checking their phones or taking a picture were now still and silent, and I could feel their attention on me heavy as a lead blanket.
I fixed Dario in my gaze and held him there through the whole thing. When I started to play, when I started to sing, when he heard that first note, that eternally-sustained, You . . .” when he heard the rest of the lyrics, abstractions, images evocative of our big and small moments together, of what he was to me, it looked almost like he’d started trembling, his face contorting just slightly, and I realized about half way through that he was trying not to cry. Not to smile. Trying to go on holding me safe in his gaze without exposing himself as the one I was singing about, the one I was singing for.
When I sing, when I’m on, everything I’ve rooted up from the deepest parts of myself during the writing of a piece come rushing up to the surface and pour into my voice, and standing there in the midst of everything Dario had made possible, everything we’d built together over all those months, looking at him, still but trembling like a plucked string, all the tenderness and need and fear and want and comfort we’d shared with each other surged into my veins, into my fingers as they slid and pressed the instrument in my hands, into my lungs, into my throat, into every breath that poured out of me, a note, a word, a refrain of utter devotion.
When I finished, almost nobody applauded. Later Dario said it was because people were too moved. That they were stunned into silence. But maybe they just didn’t know what they were supposed to do. In that strange, thick silence I set my guitar down and stepped off the stage.
Suspended, enveloped in Dario’s steady gaze promising safety, promising love, I crossed the expanse, vaguely aware of the dozens of people tracking me from where they were sitting or standing. When I took his hand, I heard his barely audible little sigh. Bringing my mouth close to his ear I whispered, “Aren’t you going to kiss me?”
That luminous smile. “God, yes.”
THE END
Varian Krylov
Growing up near Los Angeles, I spent much of my time frolicking in the Pacific Ocean and penning angst-twisted poetry. Now I'm living in sunny Spain writing pathos-riddled fiction.
I've always loved the music and substance of words, always loved writing in notebooks and journals by hand, tapping at the keys of the computer, and, of course, conjuring up stories.
And from my earliest memories, I've always been fascinated--maybe obsessed?--with sex and sexuality.
In my writing, I poke at social issues, but more than anything, I dig into the psyches of my characters. Sex is the medium, the expression, and the tool of discovery for their insecurities, the needs that drive them, the comfort they can't live without, the joy and relish of life that makes each of them intense, strange, and alluring.
Like most writers, I love hearing what you think of the stories I've written. All honest feedback is truly appreciated.