Rough Attraction (16 page)

Maxum sank down toward the floor, twisting so his back fell against the side of the bed and he dropped his head over it staring up at the ceiling. He let out a long drawn out sigh. “I just don’t know what to do.”

Darko dropped down on his side, at an angle across the bed, propping his head up on an elbow and looked at the defeated man. “About which part?”

“My four year relationship with Simeon.” He let out another sigh, his head rocking back and forth across the edge of the bed as he did, “When you’ve been together with someone that long, they’re the one you’re supposed to keep working at to get it to work. People give up all the time. I didn’t want to do that.”

“But if the two of you were not meant for each other, all the time and effort in the world isn’t going to change that. Sometimes people don’t work together in a relationship. It’s not because you’re being mean or insensitive, it just doesn’t work. Or it does, but it comes with an expiration date. Not all relationships are meant forever and you don’t know which is which until you are actually there.”

Maxum heard, but he couldn’t bring himself to say something along the lines of,
okeydokey,
I guess that’s a wrap on Simeon then
. He did, however, know his heart wasn’t in it to stay with him any longer either.

“What made it last this long?”

Maxum was silent for a moment. It wasn’t like he didn’t know the answer, he did. It just was a shitty one. “There were no lows in it. I thought that meant we worked.”

“Come on. Let’s go for a ride.” Darko patted his shoulder and jumped off the bed to get dressed.

Maxum glanced at his watch, not realizing it had already gotten so late in the night and he wasn’t even sure how the hell it slipped past them both. “Where’re we going at this hour?”

“You’ll see.” Darko only said waving him to come along.

“Fine, but you mind driving?”

Darko stopped, his leg mid-way inside his jeans and a grin melted over his face. His eyes flashed with some wicked saucy expression then went back to getting his pants on before he fell over.

In less than an hour, they’d dressed and arrived at the motorcycle shop where Darko worked. Maxum bounced in place; his hands buried in his heavy wool coat to stave off the cold night air and tried his best not to look guilty. Even though he knew Darko worked here and had a set of keys, something about showing up afterhours just felt like breaking and entering. In addition, certainly the local patrol officer would see it that way, too.

Once inside Darko locked it back up and lead the way to the machine shop in back before turning any lights on. Maxum hung back at the door to the room watching as Darko went over to the workbench and picked up a few things then turned to face him. In his right hand, Darko held up a piston casing with a holding cell made to take a piston rod approximately two inches in diameter.

“
This
— is your Simeon.” Darko waved the casing in his hand. Then held up the item in his left hand. A steel drive shaft, only it was square with rounded corners, not spherical like a typical shaft would be and it was about an inch wider than the hole in the piston casing. “
This
— is you.” He pushed the two pieces together before him and just as anyone would expect the square peg did not fit in the round hole. “No amount of time or effort will ever make these two fit together in a manner that will work.” Darko’s arms dropped around his sides as he walked over to a lathe machine, popped the cover, then set and locked the drive shaft into place. Maxum watched acutely as it only took him a fraction of a minute to line up the shaver, closed the shield and turned it on.

Darko didn’t even look at the shaft as it was being cut away, he looked dead on at him. Maxum watched as curls of shaved steel fell away, pooling up under the shaft as it was cut and reshaped into something else. When the lathe stopped, Darko popped the hood, pulled out a perfectly round two-inch diameter rod and then slid it into the hole of the casing. “Now, you can be with Simeon.” He tossed it carelessly to the floor. The casing and rod bouncing across the concrete floor in a loud clatter before coming to a stop, that oddly looked like a deformed penis. But, Maxum’s attention went back to Darko when he pulled on a leather work glove and scooped up the pile of shavings left behind on the lathe table. Like a giant brillo pad having a bad hair day. “
This
—” Darko held the wad of curled steel up, “this
was
you. This is everything about you, and what you had to give up just so you could force yourself to fit in
that
.” He nodded to the steal dick on the floor then tossed the shavings in the garbage.

Maxum was waiting for Darko to brush past him and just leave him there, gutted and wounded. Stripped of his moral of having a man he could spend the rest of his life with, only to be abandoned in the greasy machine shop with his lonely withered heart on the floor at his feet. What he got was something quite different when Darko came face to face, grabbed the back of his neck, and pulled him in for an emotionally heated kiss. Maxum was naked inside it and fuck if he didn’t feel the sting of tears in his eyes. He was defenseless against those too. He was broken down, so lost between what he thought was the right thing to do, and what he felt inside. And in that kiss he surrendered himself to the man who was hell bent to set him free, but not let go. Darko released their kiss, but never pulled back, keeping their foreheads together as Maxum held onto him for dear life.

“
This
— this works.” Darko’s voice was deep and warm like a nighttime brandy meant to sooth all those harbored chills. “We fit. When there are no lows— there are no highs either. A roller coaster can’t give you a thrill if you don’t climb and jump off a few hills.”

As if the man had been machined to precision perfection for just him.
The very words Maxum had concluded to himself silently, the night he had run to Darko for consoling for his wrong doings, came back to him now in the very analogy Darko just showed him.

Further to his surprise and weakened condition, Darko asked—

“Stay with me, please. Stay, so you don’t go home feeling totally hollow inside. Let me fill that spot, if just for one more night. Please.” Darko actually
asked him
to stay and then kissed him again as if he were a long lost lover who’d just come home.

Maxum knew he didn’t want to be alone just now. He felt emptied, stripped, his world yanked out from under his feet and all those things made him feel vulnerable. That was something completely new to him. He decided it was best to be in the strong arms of a man who would protect him while he was at his weakest.

They went back to the Laszkovi home. Pavle and Maggie’s teen boys were still up playing video games in the great room and not in the least surprised or disrupted by their passing as Maxum and Darko slipped quietly upstairs to their room.

They crawled into bed, Darko wrapping around him like a security blanket and planted feathery kisses on the back of his neck and shoulder that in turn sent chills down his body but rather than pool around his cock, they gathered in his aching heart. “I’m going to need a few days alone— to set things right. I need to close the door, but I don’t want to slam it in his face either. Simeon doesn’t deserve that. Please, I hope you—”

“I know.” Darko’s arms tightened around him and he kissed him again. “I’ll leave the light on for you.”

Leave the light on
— it meant Darko would be here waiting when he got back— when he was ready. His mind ached as much as his heart did and he was still every bit as lost as he was five minutes ago or even three days go. He lay awake while wrapped in Darko’s arms, trying to decide what to do until the grey light of dawn and exhaustion finally took him.

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CHAPTER EIGHT

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Maxum had gone home Sunday and spent most of the time glowering at his walls— right along with the empty spot in his bed. He even went as far as dragging one of the leather bound chairs in from the living room into his bedroom. Allowing himself at least the one comfort as he sat and just stared at his bed for several hours, getting up only to hit the bathroom and refill his glass of scotch and ice. Slumped down in the padding, his gaze fixed, his thoughts were not. Shifting just as steadily as the winter sun that moved across the sky and then dipped below the horizon just outside the glass walls of his room. His mind coming to the same dark ending as he stared at his bed, realizing no one had ever laid there save himself. Eight months he had lived here in the new towering elite skyscraper and he had never filled the position next to him. Simeon had never spent the night here. Maxum had always gone to his place. Endured the discomforts or lack of personal things for a night.

Why had he never brought Simeon to his own bed?

He sat there— perhaps another hour had passed in the stillness of the night, and then the answer came. It came in the visualized image of a well-built tanned body sleeping soundly in the tossed sheets.

Simeon wasn’t the person to fill his life.

Monday at the office was like any other Monday that just happened to follow the largest sales event day of every retailer’s year. And for reasons Maxum had never been able to wrap his head around, businesses that had no financial survival relations to whether Black Friday was a good sales day or not, were calling in because so and so is still in the red even after the mega sales day. Demanding how this is going to affect their stocks in wind power energy.

By the time Maxum had put out a dozen senseless fires, got through his regular Monday meetings and global conference calls then made it home, the last thing he was prepared to do was try to talk to Simeon to bring things to a closing.

Before he knew, it was Thursday.

He left the office early and met up with Simeon at one of their usual sushi bars. Maxum was thinking if they were in a public place Simeon wouldn’t put on such a show. He was wrong. At first, Simeon seemed to make no reaction, but the tapping of his chopsticks on the plate meant he was letting it build up inside for the Hollywood style dramatic scene. When it did come, it was clearly an epic achievement. Many Maxum had long since grown immune to and sat back watching and waiting as Simeon went through the routine of performances. This was Simeon’s neighborhood, not his. He didn’t care what on lookers where thinking of them right now.

“Oh, I don’t know what to say.” His voice went up in a clear rendition of Albert from the Bird Cage. Yes Simeon new the movie, both the remake and the original, word for word and recited them well when they favored him. “I’m feeling faint. I just don’t understand what has brought this on? We were happy.” His hand floated up beside his cheek as he shook his head in an act of astonished bewilderment. But there was a sudden shift in his expression his eyes narrowing at Maxum. “Are you going straight?” the question was more accusation then request for information.

“No Simeon I just think it’s time we go our separate ways. I am tired of feeling alone when I am with you.”

“Yes but you don’t come by. Why I had a small coffee social yesterday and you didn’t come. And what about Thanksgiving? It was embarrassing having to make up a story to my friends as to why you weren’t there.” His hand dropped around his chest as if to grasp at an aching heart, while we turned about scanning the group of people who seemed to be as oblivious to them as Maxum felt oblivious to Sim. It was all about him and how he presented himself to his friends and god forbid the trophy husband failed to make a viewing from his cave of misery. No wonder when you go to zoos the animals are always hiding.

When Sim brought his hand to his forehead and claimed a headache was coming Maxum knew it was their queue to take it back to the condo. The academy award winning stage performance was on the way.

Simeon shuffled straight for the bathroom, followed with the ruckus of pill bottles. Mostly vitamins and lots, and lots of headache medicines. When he came out, he held what looked like a prescription bottle in his fist and shook it at Maxum with a haggard look about him. “Do you see when you bring me to? I actually went in there and for a second considered killing myself over you!” Simeon shook the bottle again for emphasis then made an over hand swing and tossed it at him. The bottle glanced off Maxum’s shoulder, falling to the floor and broke open. Little blue pills went everywhere. “I would have died if I had gone through with it!” Of course, Maxum had known better than that. Simeon had never been
that
emotionally involved in anything to go that route. Not to mention that while Sim liked his party favors, he didn’t have anything so potent or toxic in his home. Hell, Simeon didn’t even have poisonous bug spray. Everything was all natural and environmentally safe.

Next came the forced hugging. Sim threw himself at Maxum wrapping his arms around him. Maxum felt nearly mortified by it. Not that Simeon was heartbroken but because the whole thing was completely void of any true felt emotions. Like wax and not even a single tear. As much as Maxum had dreaded this moment, fearing he would be sending the final nail into his heart and the pain that would follow, he arrived to the realization that he felt none of that, just— emptiness.

“Enough of the stratagem, Sim.” He peeled Simeon’s arm from around his middle and that’s when the slap came. Setting off a trigger in him as it stung across his cheek.

“I can’t believe you’d break up with me! What will everyone think?”

There had been many-a-times when Maxum questioned the validity of being slapped, but this time he was certain from the second it came across his face, he did not deserve it and without further discussion of his reasons, he left Simeon to deal with the reality of being single on his own.

He was considering a drive even though his angry heavy foot suggested it would not be the wisest of ideas, but he wasn’t ready to just sit in his empty home. Logic was going to lose out when its only card was to go home and be confined— alone. He would not purge there. And he knew he needed to do so before inviting Darko into his life.
Don’t be a fall back
. He told himself.