St. Nacho's (9 page)

“That was the cutest thing I think I’ve ever seen, bro,” Oscar teased. I ducked my head and turned to wash my hands and get back to work. “I take it back,” he said to Tomas.

“Nobody can resist a guy who cooks and plays the violin.” Tomas laughed at my discomfort. “What’s wrong, Cooper?” he asked. “It’s not like you’ve never had a boyfriend before.” He went back to work, arguing with Oscar as they prepared food and plated orders.

I had a boy riend?

f

I had a boyfriend. Had I ever had one before? I’d had lovers. Lots of them. I looked at Shawn carefully the next few times he moved in and out of the kitchen. If I did have a boyfriend and Shawn was it, I was a damned lucky son of a bitch. He was gorgeous, nice, funny, and frightening in the sack, in a good way. He made me feel things, in and out of bed, St. Nacho’s

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that I’d never felt before. Stupid things. Naive things. Things I didn’t believe and couldn’t put my trust in. That and I wanted to hump his leg like a dog every time I saw him. Shit.

When it came time for me to play and Jim turned off the overhead music, I took the opportunity to lose myself. I think I played the best I’d ever played that night, relaxed and happy in the cozy waterfront bar. Patrons clapped and some even pushed a couple of empty tables back and danced, as I switched from mariachi to Irish music. I fiddled my way through some standard pub fare and even played a couple of love ballads, which several couples danced to romantically, touching and kissing around the restaurant. I saw Shawn smiling at me, looking at me in a way no one had ever looked at me, and I felt full to bursting with something I couldn’t name.

Later, Shawn took me upstairs. He had this habit of catching my hand and pulling me along like a duck on a string, which I hate to say I found endearing. I knew he was younger than me by six years at twenty-two, and he was still in school and bused tables at a bar for money. I didn’t know much of anything about his family, or his home life, or even what he studied in school. He knew less than that, I’m sure, about me. But when he pulled me to his body that night, he played me like I played the violin, and all the notes were perfect and clear and sweet. He gave me pleasure like I’d never known and pulled from me a kind of surrender that I’d never dared to experience. I gave him complete control, and he could have cut off my air and I would have kept my eyes on his in absolute willing submission and died.

I loved him. I loved him.

“Hey,” he said, interlacing his fingers with mine and pulling a sheet up over our sweating bodies. He faced me on the narrow bed, no mean feat, his nose only inches from mine. I could smell beer on his breath, and I’m sure he could smell cigarettes on mine. I felt a half smile creep over me; goofy, I thought.

He put a finger on the corner of my mouth. “Tell me something without words…” I began to pull him closer to me to kiss him, maybe go for round two. He held me back.

“Without words or sex.” He smiled.

I thought, Shit, what did I have to tell him? My ASL coup of the day, “How was your day?” was useless to me now. I rolled my eyes.

“Good. That tells me I make you crazy,” he teased.

I tried to think of something that wasn’t too stupid. Finally, I lifted his hand and kissed it, then placed it over my heart so he could feel it beating.

“Oh,” he said. “Oh. I like how you think. Mmph…” He buried his face in my shoulder.

“Now, shut the fuck up already so we can get some sleep.” I remember putting an arm around him, thinking I’d never been so content. He snored.

I was good with that, except after a while I thought maybe the wrong one of us was deaf.

46 Z. A. Maxfield

Chapter Eight

As usual, Sunday brunch at Nacho’s started out under a thick blanket of fog. By two o’clock, though, it burned off, leaving the palest blue sky with just a dusting of clouds. Not much of a wind blew, and what there was seemed crisp and clean. Shawn and I got to leave work early, a special treat, and we headed out on my bike for a ride. I could tell that Shawn had never ridden a motorcycle, so we took it slow. I let him get the feel of the Sportster as we wound our way along Pacific Coast Highway between the beach communities there, until we would get to a town and traffic would crawl, all the other tourists out doing the same thing.

Something settled inside me then, a deep serenity, the kind I thought I would get from rehab, but didn’t. It wasn’t Shawn. He was part of the picture, but I knew better than to expect someone to fill my empty spaces. I thought it might have been the act of standing in one place long enough to look around. I was taking stock in St. Nacho’s, making a new list of what I didn’t want and, maybe more importantly, what I did I liked laughing, I found out, and music. I liked nice people, getting up early, and working hard. I liked simple pleasures, like my toes in the sand and someone to kiss. I didn’t have to understand Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle, or why Mahler stayed only one year with the Metropolitan Opera. I just had to chop onions into neat little pieces. I could stop in St. Nacho’s and do what I’d been doing, and though I had a definite preference, I could be happy with or without Shawn. Shawn’s presence at my back on that ride was a bonus.

We stopped at a restaurant in Morro Bay called The Galley and ate Dungeness crab cocktails. Shawn tried opakapaka because he liked the name, and I had albacore with grilled vegetables. Time slowed down with Shawn, each moment stretching longer as I watched him. One of the things he began to do was teach me the sign for every single item we came in contact with. I thought my head would explode, but the pleasure he displayed when I got St. Nacho’s

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it right made me continue on with the game, and it was a game because he made it fun all through the day.

“Fish,” he said and signed. His hand moved like a fish through the water. “Fish.”

“Fish,” I signed.

We did table, napkin, knife, fork, spoon, plate, glass, bread, water, ice. He asked me which words I remembered. I went blank. “Fish,” I signed.

Shawn rubbed his face. “Good,” he said finally.

I’ll take a class, I texted him. I found one online. I gave Jim the money. Shawn’s smile was like the sun.

“Thank you,” he said, sticking out his tongue in a vulgar way.

“You’re welcome,” I said, and signed a nasty little message of my own.

Watching him eat, I noticed his every movement. How he sipped his beer, how he used his utensils, the drops of condensation from his water goblet that wet his lips and he licked off, unaware that I was looking. In an agony of self-conscious discomfort, I slowed my usual quick pace to his more leisurely one, wanting to do everything just right.

This kind of thing had been much easier with the addition of alcohol to ease the tension. I was covered in a kind of social rust, made worse by my age and his expectations.

Oil me.

Shawn took the check and wouldn’t give it up when I attempted to pay. He both spoke and gestured that it was his treat and ended up leaving cash and a generous tip. He threw an arm around me as we walked out of the restaurant. People stared at us, some in frank disapproval. I was exploding with pride. I’d never felt such numbing gratitude. I drove us back to St. Nacho’s, hyperaware of him behind me. His warm hands slipped around me and he leaned forward. Sometimes I felt him press against me in a deliberate hug.

We returned to the bar, which was empty and dark, and walked up the stairs together.

I felt all new, somehow, and different in a way I couldn’t explain but it made me hesitant. It was as if anything I did from that point on counted. Shawn turned the knob and opened the door, and I walked in ahead of him. He leaned back against it once he closed it. Things stood still for a minute. Time hung on me like old clothes, dragging me down. I started to take off my leather jacket because suddenly I didn’t want to be wearing it. It marked me as the property of some other man, now almost forgotten in the haze of distant memory. My recollection was faulty anyway and filled with gaps and holes like overproofed bread. I dropped the jacket and kicked it to the corner of the small room.

“Hey, you,” said Shawn, looking relaxed. I saw him swallow hard and it made me smile.

“Hey.” I stood where I was, preferring to let him take the lead. If in conversational situations I felt rusty, in this I was wholly new.

He gestured to me. “Come here.”

48 Z. A. Maxfield

I went. Beginning at the top of my head, he used his hands to graze lightly over me, like he would have petted an animal, letting his touch soothe and introduce us all over again.

“Pretty,” he said, and I laughed. He fingered my ear where I was pierced all the way from lobe to cartilage and the eyebrow where I had the tiny barbell. His lips rose in a smile, really just on one side. It was monstrous how much I wanted him. He thumbed near my eyes and then over my eyelids as they closed. He tipped my head back and his lips came down on mine, tentatively at first, but inquiring, as if he were asking for entrance. I slid my hands around his back and down to his ass, content to just rest them there. He opened my mouth and his tongue crept in as he cupped and cradled my face.

I responded with enthusiasm, kissing, tasting, and touching him, going as slow as I had at the meal, wanting to experience every second fully. But like blood moving to a frozen extremity, my return to human interaction wasn’t without discomfort. I felt unbearably awkward, relying heavily on him to show me what he liked, to tell me what to do to please him. I knew I wanted to go from being passive to actively pleasing him, to giving instead of just taking. I had a moment of real respect for the ease of being thrown against a wall and fucked hard. It made me smile.

“What?” asked Shawn.

“It’s nothing.” I shook my head and slipped a hand under his jacket to help him ease it off. He closed his eyes. I threw his jacket to the floor with mine, and it hit the scarred wooden floor with a thud. Then I went after his T-shirt. Once I had it off, I admired the hard planes of his chest and belly, the strength in his arms. I didn’t know what he did for exercise, only that it worked. I guessed he danced. Maybe did track in school. He was long, lean, and rangy. Strong, but not bulky. He wrapped his hands around my neck, kneading my shoulders.

“Are you tense?” he asked.

“No,” I replied, looking down. “Yes.” I nodded. We stood there for a few minutes, kissing like teenagers. He kissed with his whole body, and I responded with mine. Bliss.

He walked me toward my small bed and seated me on it, then toed off his shoes and socks before removing his jeans. He slid out of his shorts and stood before me, erect, handsome, and silent.

“What can I do?” I asked him, struggling out of my own jeans.

“What?” he asked.

I leaned down and untied my boots and tossed them out of the way, along with my socks. I made sure he could see my lips. “What can I do for you?” I asked again. I tried to make him understand by speaking very crisply, but I felt like an idiot. “What do you like?” I held my breath, unaccountably shy.

“I like you,” he said, lying down next to me, not touching but close, facing me. I dug a pillow from behind me and offered it to him. He put it under his head. “I like you, Cooper.” St. Nacho’s

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I touched his face as I’d wanted to the first time I saw it, exploring it with my fingertips. I let my hands play over its contours and thumbed his lips. “So pretty,” I muttered.

“What?” he asked, lifting my face.

“Pretty,” I said. “Beautiful.” I had learned “you” in ASL. “You,” I demonstrated.

“Beautiful.”

He smiled. “Beautiful.” He showed me how to make the word, a finger, surrounding his face. I did it.

Teasing, he grabbed my hand. “Stop talking,” he said, and pulled me to him.

I just entwined myself around him and let him do what he wanted. He touched me all over, breathed me in and licked me. He was everywhere at once. His tongue was on some sort of quest to find deeper and more hidden places, the more ticklish the better. We rolled and nuzzled, rubbed and groaned, until I felt frenzied and he was covered in a sheen of salty sweat.

“Here,” he said, pulling me down on top of him and lifting his legs. I probably looked at him like I’d never seen him before.

“What?” I asked. Oh, I knew what. I was stalling for time.

“My ass is what,” he said impatiently. “Fuck me?” His open face held nothing that looked like a challenge in it.

“Oh, hey…”

“Don’t you?” he asked, relaxing his legs back down. “Really, don’t you like it?”

“I don’t dislike it,” I said, hedging, aware that he didn’t understand because I’d mumbled.

“You don’t want me like that?” He looked into my eyes.

I couldn’t help the look that passed over my face. I was sure it told him everything he needed to know.

“You’re scared,” he said.

I shook my head.

“It’s all right. You don’t have to.”

“I want to,” I said, lowering my eyes. I made damn sure he could read my lips. “I really want to.”

His face relaxed into an easy grin. “Come here,” he said on a sigh. “We’ll go slow, all right?” Oh. Slow.

I found the lube and upended it in my hand, squirting a small amount onto my fingertips. I wanted to warm it, so I rubbed it back and forth between them, and then looked at my fingers again, wondering if I still had enough. It didn’t matter that Shawn wanted this.

I was going to second-guess my way through the entire thing. Shawn tugged on my shoulder and I looked up. He appeared to be laughing at me.

50 Z. A. Maxfield

I slid down so I could see what I was doing, and I think he sucked in air and bit his lip when I touched his dick with my tongue. It came alive in my mouth, and I nuzzled his balls on my way down, finding the smooth strip of skin behind them and nibbling on that. I tongued his hole and breached it, savoring the soft keening sounds I heard him make.

There were times when his unmusical voice was like a symphony to me.

I used a finger to stroke the tightly puckered flesh, dark in the dim light. I found myself clenching my teeth as I entered him with it, holding my breath until he gave way and his tight muscles let me in. I didn’t have to ask. This wasn’t his usual thing either. We were forging new bonds here, charting new territory that would be only ours, and I felt it in his indrawn breath whenever my finger moved.