My Best Man by Andy Schell (unputdownable books .txt) 📗

drenched with sweat, my face still smells hot doggish, I have no idea what I’m going to say, and I’m so utterly exhausted, mentally and physically, I simply give up. I don’t even get out of the car. I just sit there, my hand on the ignition key, ready to leave. Nicolo, after lifting out two bags of groceries from the back of the pickup truck, walks out to the street, and asks me, “What are you doing, Harry?”

“I’m going home, Nicolo,” I tell him. “I’ve been chasing you forever, and I can’t chase you anymore. I’m losing respect for

myself. All I’ve wanted to do is explain, but now I’m going home.” I turn the key, put the car in gear, and roll away. Believe me, my love for him still endures, and I’ll always wish that we could have a life together, but the heat of the day seems to have melted my ardor, and I can’t get past his mother, nor force Nicolo’s face into a mold if it doesn’t fit, so I’m just going to go home and wash my own face for the eighth time today.

Minutes later I’m in the shower at my house when I hear a tapping on the window. “Harry,” a voice calls, “are you in there?” It’s Nicolo’s voice. He’s standing outside the slightly open bathroom window.

“Yes,” I yell, washing my face for the ninth time.

“My mother just told me! Your calls. A letter. How you never gave up. Will you please talk to me?”

“That’s my line,” I tell him, rinsing the soap off. “Please, Harry. I do want to talk,” he tells me. “The back door is open,” I answer.

Not thirty seconds later, he pulls back the curtain to the shower and stands naked in front of me. I look into his eyes and take a quick glance at his body. He’s gorgeous. “May I come in?” he asks.

I smile and do an anemic, abbreviated version of one of Amity’s sweeping arm gestures, inviting him in.

He steps in, takes the soap from my hands, turns me, and soaps my back. “I’m sorry. I’m an Italian at heart, my friend. I let my anger and emotions keep me from you at first, but by the time I realized I was wrong, you stopped calling or coming over. And I thought you had left me. I didn’t know that my mother was keeping us apart. She feels guilty -she wants to tell you herself. I am guilty too. I haven’t been fair. I should have listened to you in the beginning, and now my mother says time is running out.”

His strong hands are moving the soap in circles around my back

XilUy OuIIUii while the stream of hot water hits my chest. “All I want to do is explain,” I tell him, leaning into his hands.

“I’m ready,” he whispers in my ear.

“My father wasn’t like yours. His principles were strong, but not in the way your father’s probably were. He was shortsighted, only aware of his own little society. I guess what I’m trying to say is that he wasn’t so concerned with people living, as your father was, but with people living right.” I reach for the soap in his hands, and turn him around. His shoulders are big, like a swimmer’s, and his dark skin is made shiny by the sheet of water passing over. I soap his back and massage him. “That meant the right school, the right car, the right house, the right neighborhood. And gay people just didn’t live in that neighborhood know what I mean?”

He nods. “Yes.”

I move my hands down to his waist and over his ass, not in a sexual way, but with the strength of therapeutic massage. “You know about my horse, so you know what he’s capable of. Anyway, he put it in the will that, if I’m not married by this week, my birthday, I lose my inheritance. And it’s millions and millions, Nicolo.” I knead his beefy ass, pressing my thumbs into it, and he braces himself against the tile.

“Where did you learn this?” he asks.

“From my father’s attorney.”

“No. Where did you learn the massage ?”

“From my ex-boyfriend,” I tell him. “He was a swimmer, and he used to have to get massages to work out his cramps.” I look past his buttocks to the back of his powerful thighs and down to his calves. Man, even his heels are beautiful. “So at some point after meeting Amity, I realized I could still have my rightful claim, because she understood. Everything. And she was willing to help me, and I was willing to help her, and we could get married, but still have our relationships on the side. How was I supposed to know that I’d meet you and the whole thing would be tested?”

“Do you think she feels about Thomas the way you feel about me?” He turns around, faces me for the answer.

“Not at all,” I tell him. I drop the soap and it hits the tub with a clunk. There’s a moment of silence; then we both laugh. “Pick it up,” he orders, still laughing. “No way. You pick it up,” I tell him.

“Leave it for now,” he suggests. “We’ll decide who picks it up later.”

“Good idea.” I put my hands on his biceps, look him dead in the eye. “She doesn’t love Thomas. But I love you. And I want to live with you and be your mate.”

“I love you too,” he says, pulling my hands off his arms and holding them. “So shouldn’t the wedding be between you and me?”

I want it to be, but I don’t know if it can. I’m suffocating in the steam, and I have no answer to his question. “Are we done in here?” I ask him. He nods, and I turn off the shower, realizing this is the stupidest move of my life. I could have soaped the front of him. What a fool I am. I step out,