I woke up on a chilly March morning, completely alone.
For a while I just lay there, enjoying the warmth of the blankets and listening to my rats puttering around in the next room. It was peaceful and nice, but I couldn’t help feeling like something was missing. Like that annoying feeling you get when you’re about to walk out the door but you’re super convinced you’ve forgotten something important, like your keys or your brain.
“Shit,” I said softly, then I rooted around in the covers until I found my phone.
There was already a message waiting for me from Mahendra. It just said Good morning 🙂 Happy Sunday, but even those few little words felt nice. I felt weirdly like I’d accomplished something, although you could argue the opposite since I had totally failed to bring him home, or get invited home, or manage anything even approaching petting of any kind. This was so far outside of my regular dating habits that I guess I was still figuring out how to react to the whole thing.
When my mind starts to feel a little weird like this, the best strategy I’ve come up with is to lie somewhere comfy and think out my thoughts in as organized a fashion as I can manage. This doesn’t always work because as you’ve probably noticed by now, my thoughts like to run off in any direction the wind takes them, but I try, okay? I try a lot.
So I buried myself back in the blanket, pushed my head under the pillow and did my very best bug in a rug impression. It was extremely cosy for about five minutes, but then I started running out of air and overheating like nobody’s business. None of this is really great for thinking thinky thoughts, so I kicked off the blanket and flailed around in the bed until I’d dug a sort of channel in the mass of softness. Then I laid on my back, crossed my arms and stared at the fairy lights covering my bedroom ceiling. In the nighttime those lights look pretty magical, all soft and glowy, but in the daytime when the wires taped to the ceiling all show, it’s kind of a letdown. But whatever, that wasn’t what I was lying there to think about! Thinky thoughts. Good, proper, definitely not-sexy thinky thoughts.
At this point, I could tell you that I lay there in deep meditation for a respectable amount of time, going over my life choices in excruciating detail and coming to some grand conclusions about my existence that were sure to carry me to the gates of the kingdom of elf heaven. But the truth of the matter is, I’m just not that smart. Or more like, the amount of smarts I do have tends to be cancelled out by the amount of time it takes me to gather up these smarts, put them in a box so they don’t run away, and carry them over to whatever part of my brain needs them the most at any given moment. Do you see what I’m saying? It was going to take more than a casual hangout in my own bed to figure out these thinky thoughts and I wasn’t about the waste the day trying to hammer my feelings into a shape that made sense.
What I did figure out as I was making coffee, feeding the rats and grimacing at the weather report was that I had actually managed to have a ton of fun with someone without needing the happy ending, as it were. This might seem obvious to any normal person, but when you’ve lived most of your adult life in the hard and fast and no-time-for-feelings-where’s-the-booze way that I have, some of your perspective will want to slip away quietly until it feels like you’re ready to handle it.
The next logical question was, was I ready to admit to Mahendra that I enjoyed being around him just for the sake of it? Wasn’t that already taking the whole thing one step further than I had ever planned? When I’d first agreed to go out with him I hadn’t really been thinking about the next time or the time after that. I’d never really had to before, so why was I gonna start now? It’s not like I had never been asked out randomly by handsome strangers in my own neighborhood. In my experience, that kind of encounter usually ends in a grand slam, then nothing. Which is how most guys seem to prefer it these days, so who am I to complain? Isn’t that just how the world works now?
“What is love?” I mumble-sang to the rats as they mashed around in their digging box. “Baby don’t hurt me.”
By this time, all this thinking was starting to make me jittery, so when my phone suddenly blared out the chorus to that one old elven ballad that my mom absolutely hates, I basically fell off the couch in shock.
My mom said, “Hey kiddo, what’s for lunch?”
I said, “Ow.”
“I’m not familiar with the dish.”
“This one exchange pretty much explains my entire childhood. I don’t know, Mom, what’s for lunch?”
“Eh, I was going to let you decide. Want to come over? Church ran long and I am starving.”
Only my mother would complain about church running long with the most church-committed guy we both know within earshot, but I guess my dad’s used to it. It must be enough for him that she bothers to go at all when she barely believes in any of it.
I looked up at my ceiling from my crumpled position on the floor. I’d been seeing a lot of that ceiling lately, which couldn’t be a good thing, so I said, “Yeah, sure, I’ll come over. What are you guys hungry for?”
“Surprise us. But bring wine!”
Getting day-drunk with my parents seemed as good a plan as any for a thinky thoughts Sunday afternoon, so I picked myself up and put Sys and Dia back in their cage, leaving them to clean off their little paws and chow down on the sunflower seeds I’d hidden in their digging box like delicious ratty gold. I decided that a little trip around town would help me adjust to my new brand of internal monologue, so I was off into the spring cold in a jiffy. Maybe I was walking a little faster than I normally would on a day off, but if there was still a chance that I could outrun all these new emotions trying to crowd their way into my head, I wasn’t about to pass it up.
One short culinary tour of the city later, I was jumping up the steps to my parents’ apartment and crushing the buzzer like I’d never wanted to crush anything more in my life. My mom appeared on the balcony two floors above and shouted down, “Just come in!”
I yelled back, “Why do you do this every single time? That’s not how apartment buildings work!”
“Vriev, let our poor boy in from the cold!”
My dad must have obeyed because the door alarmed at me, just begging to be opened. I was upstairs in a minute and was smothered by my mom the second I walked in the door. I held my grocery bags out to the sides so they wouldn’t get as annihilated as my ribcage was getting.
“Oof! Everyone’s so violently huggy this week.”
“Who’s everyone? Besides, I’m your mother and I haven’t seen you in ages.”
I sighed. Some of my mom’s crazy curly hair was going up my nose. “I saw you two days ago when I came to make breakfast.”
“That’s forever in mom years.” Without letting go, she looked up at me and made the biggest puppy dog eyes in the world. “What did you bring us?”
“Cachitos.”
“Gezundheit.”
“It’s a kind of Venezuelan bread stuffed with things. I also got you some dulce de leche cupcakes from the same place.”
“Aaaand?”
“And,” I added, “some wine. Venezuelan, in keeping with the theme.”
“Vinoriev,” she said happily as my dad popped his head into the hall, probably to see what was keeping us. “Look at our Toriv. He’s such a good provider now.”
Dad smiled. “Yes. And I am sure he is wonderful at taking off his shoes and coming in, if you would let him.”
“Yeah,” I said, “I’m great at that. You could even say I’m the best.”
“Well, get cracking, then.”
She finally let go of me. Sweet release. She grabbed all the stuff from my hands and left me to kick my boots off and hang up my jacket. As I was fixing my hair in the mirror above the telephone stand, I noticed my parents had added some photos on the wall. Along with the same old family photos and approximately half a million pics of me as a kid, there were some recent shots taken inside the café, some group photos with my parents’ friends at Sharpe’s bar and a posed shot of my parents with my grandpa, my dad’s dad, outside his old house way out in the new homelands in the west. I’d never seen that picture before, so I squinted at it for a bit before finally wandering into the kitchen.
There’s always a weird moment when I walk into my parents’ house where I instantly feel five years old again. Today that moment was in the kitchen, where the sun was slanting in between the bead garlands hung from the gauzy curtains and the smell of my dad’s favorite herbal tea was in the air. When he handed me a cup of the tea, I realized it was the same old cup I’ve had my tea in since I was maybe twelve, even though I could have sworn I’d accidentally smashed it years ago.
“Thanks, Daddy. Hey, uh, when did you guys go to see Grandpa?”
Mom said, “What?” because she was already busy shuffling through the grocery bags, but for some reason Dad looked embarrassed, like he’d just realized he’d forgotten something really important.
“You know, the picture in the hall. Is it from a while ago? You don’t have your snake arm piece yet.”
Mom stopped putting stuff out on the table and glanced down at the cobra tattoo curled around her bicep. When her eyes flicked back up to me, she had the same weird look my dad had.
“Oh,” she said, which told me exactly nothing.
“Hrm,” my dad said, which told me the same.
I sipped my tea nervously. “What’s up? I’m just asking. If I’d known you were going, I would have gone too. You know I haven’t seen Grandpa since I was a kid.”
Mom turned away and started setting the table again. After a look in her direction, my dad saw how it was going to be and was finally the one to answer me: “You were gone, at the time.”
“Gone?” It took me a second, but then it clicked. “Oh. You mean after I’d left home the first time.”
“Yes.”
“Your dad was so funny,” Mom said from the table. She was clearly not looking at either of us. “He was convinced that was where you’d gone. You, on your own! As if you’d even remember the way.”
I tried to laugh. “Hey, maybe I could have figured it out. Worst case, I would have hiked to Grandpa de Carneus’ cave and asked the old lizard if he remembers where the new elven homelands are.”
Making a joke about the old dragon on the mountain was usually enough to lighten any atmosphere — he’s pretty famous around these parts, which I guess just automatically happens when you’re the only transmuted dragon still kicking in the province — but the kitchen felt as tense as ever. This always happens when someone mentions “the time you were gone”. Never mind that it was a decade ago and we’ve all definitely moved on from it, especially me.
“Um,” I said into the weird quiet. “It’s fine. Sorry I asked.”
“No, no,” my dad said.
He came over and put his arms around me, so that I had to hold my tea squished up against my chest to let him close. I felt him shift as if he was looking at my mom, but she wasn’t moving from over by the table.
In a tense voice I’ve only heard a handful of times in my life, Dad said, “Evanis” followed by something in elven. Whatever it was, it finally got her to creep over and touch her hand to the back of my head. That’s always been her “I’m here” gesture, so despite the weird way this conversation had progressed, I felt comforted.
“I’m sorry, okay?” I said against my dad’s shoulder. “I’ll never stop being sorry.”
“I know, baby,” Mom said. “Me too.”
Dad didn’t say anything, but I felt his arms tighten like he hadn’t seen me in ages either. As an adult, it feels strange to be held like this by your parents, but it feels even stranger to hear them apologize to you. As far as I remember, it’s the only thing my mother’s ever said sorry to me for.
We all stood like that for a good long while, then Dad said in elven, “We should eat”, then in English, “Thank you for coming home today.”
“Aw, stop,” I said pathetically. “I’m gonna cry.”
“Then cry, you big baby.”
“God, Mom!”
“Enough, now.” He was trying to be serious, but I could tell Dad was laughing. “This food our son brought us must not be wasted. Sit.”
“Yeah, what he said. Eat, be merry, etcetera, etcetera.”
So we did. The cachitos were pretty much the best thing ever, with their soft sweet bread and savoury fillings. My mom basically had an anerurysm over how good the dulce de leche cupcakes were. She made me swear we’d reverse engineer the recipe for the shop, so like a good and dutiful son I wrote the task down in my to-do app: Poach dulce de leche cupcake recipe. Then I thought about it for a second and added Pick up DdL cupcake for Mahendra. Maybe his tastes in sweets extended beyond just chocolate. Besides, seeing him again would be a way for me to check that my new emotions vis-a-vis dating were the real deal and not some fluke born of one too many Long Island iced teas.
“Who’s Mahendra?”
When I looked, Mom was peeking over my shoulder at my phone. Naturally.
“You met him at the shop, remember? Professor Singh?”
“Ooooooh.” I really did not like the sound of that. “Hiiiiim.” I liked the sound of that even less.
There was a second of quiet where everyone was busy sipping their Venezuelan wine and I foolishly allowed myself to believe the matter was dropped, but then Mom said, “So you’re on a first name basis now.”
“I’m on a first name basis with all my regulars.”
“Uh-huh. Do you go out of your way to buy pastries for all of your regulars too?”
“Mom–“
“Well, I have it on good authority,” she continued menacingly, “that you’ve been seeing someone of the tall, dark and handsome variety, and I am not pleased with the fact that I, your mother, am the last to know.”
I wanted to pinch myself. Every single conversation I’ve had with my parents today has been too awful and surreal to be true.
I said, “There’s nothing to know, Mavae. On the other hand, I’d like to know who told you there was so I can murder them in their sleep.”
She held up her phone like that explained everything. Dad tried to disguise a laugh in a cough and dunked the rest of his wine to cover his tracks. I narrowed my eyes at them both.
“Out with it,” I said in my best murderous pirate voice. Maybe the wine was starting to go to my head a little, but in my experience that only makes for better murderous pirate voices.
Mom refilled her wine glass and sucked the wayward drop from the edge of the bottle from her thumb. “I’ll never tell.”
“You will if I withhold your discounted coffee price for a month.”
“What? Cruel! How would you like it if I withheld your friends and family discount at the tattoo shop?”
“Eh, I’ve got all the pieces I need for now.”
She called me something in elven that I’m pretty sure means “snotty little shit”, and which I’m also pretty sure is a third of all the elven she knows. “You bad boy. After all the work I did to get this information too.”
“Ah.” I took a long pull of my wine. It was actually really good for something I had picked out randomly at the SAQ. “I see now. So it was Loriev.”
Mom’s face fell. “How did you know.”
“Everyone else I was thinking of would have been way too eager to dish the dirt, so you wouldn’t have had to convince them. Also congrats, I’m going to have to kill my best friend and quasi-brother because of you.”
“Don’t be mad at Riev, baby. He had to say something for me to stop bothering him all evening.”
“I bet.”
“You can only blame yourself, you know. I wouldn’t have to find out about your personal life from your friends if you kept me more up to date.”
“There’s nothing–” Suddenly I needed more wine but my glass was still full, so i knocked it back and poured myself another. “Nothing happened, I’m just the same as I always was. I’m busy. Gotta pay bills. Rats need vet appointments. All that jazz.”
Mom reached for the wine bottle too. Without looking up from his weekend paper, Dad swiped it and placed it on the other end of the table where she couldn’t touch it.
“So you’re telling me that this news about you having a new British boyfriend does not have a lick of truth in it?”
“No!” Stare. “I mean–” Staaare. “I–” BIG STARE. “There might be a…tiny lick?”
“I KNEW IT!”
“Whoa, whoa. Don’t bust out the party garlands, okay? We went on two dates. Two dates does not constitute a relationship.”
“No, but it’s the beginning of one.” Mom came around the table and wrapped her arms around my neck. “Ooh, baby, I’m so happy for you. Maybe this guy will be the one, huh?”
“Staaawp. I haven’t even thought that far ahead.”
“Well, you should. You never know what you could open yourself up to.”
So far, it only looked like I was opening myself up to a lot of lying on the floor and staring at the ceiling, but that’s not the kind of thing you tell your parents if you want them to leave you alone. “Yeah. Sure. I get it. Dad, give her back the wine, please.”
He gave me his “I think we’ve all had enough” look and got up to put the bottle away in the fridge. My mom and I both sighed. Then we all ate more cachitos and started arguing about whether I should implement a loyalty card system at the shop. I would be fine with a simple card-stamping shindig, but the rents thought I should dream a little bigger, as if that wouldn’t cost me more time and money than I already have.
“I’m just saying, if you can find the right person in your team or something, you’ll be golden.”
“Mom, where am I supposed to find an app programmer among my team?”
“Aren’t the twins going to cegep? Engineering?”
“Sound engineering. They’re musicians, not computer nerds.”
Eventually we stopped having sensical arguments and just went back to the same old topics a family always talks about, with a sprinkling of neighborhood gossip overheard (and sometimes instigated) by my mother during an evening at Sharpe’s. The afternoon passed in this lazy, familiar way. I wasn’t tipsy anymore, but by the time the sun began to dip below the roofs I felt fuzzy, like my entire brain had dry mouth. I’m not sure I could blame it entirely on the wine. But I was trying not to think about it, like I was trying not to think about last night’s date with Mahendra or about the way my dad kept touching his fingers to my arm, like he was checking for a pulse.
After a while, I realized it was probably time to remove myself. It always takes me way too long to recognize when my regular brain fuzziness is gearing up to become a specific kind of brain fuzziness. The one I’m thinking of usually comes with a kind of antsiness that makes you either want to run for miles or tear your own skin off. Either way, it’s not a good look. It was high time to make myself scarce.
As was pulling on my boots and jacket, my parents stood in the hall, giving me that lost “I can’t believe you’re leaving” look they always give me when I go, as if I don’t live three streets away and they could come see me whenever they want.
“Take care at work and stuff, kiddo,” Mom said.
“Watch for the cold,” Dad said.
“Yeah, sure,” I said to them both.
My gaze landed on the photo of them with my grandpa again. When I looked properly, I could see my parents looked tired and drawn, even in the summer sun. One of my grandpa’s wiry strong hands was clamped tight on my dad’s shoulder, like he was holding him together.
“Hey,” I said. “Can we go visit Grandpa together sometime? He’s getting pretty old, right? Like…at least a million.”
“Of course, amavae,” Dad said.
“You’ll have to practice your elven again,” Mom said. “The older he gets, the more he’s losing his English.”
“Seriously?”
“Yeah, talking to him was like charades for me. So channel some of your not-boyfriend’s school smarts and study up, okay?”
I promised. Then I left. The sun was almost set by that time and the wet spring cold was setting in, which meant I was chilled to the bone within minutes. I set off at a fast clip, my hands dug deep into my pockets, my breath fogging the air in front of my face.
In the moment, making them promise to take me to see Grandpa had made sense, but now that I was walking down the chilly street and thinking about it, I felt weird. I haven’t seen my grandfather since I was a little kid, barely out of diapers. When I think of his face, it floats up in my mind’s eye as a strange mishmash of my child’s memory, features I remember from photos, and a bit of my own dad’s face. I remember his voice a tiny bit more — rumbly like a mountain and accented like Dad’s — and his arms, which were real hard and strong and picked me up like I weighed nothing at all.
I wondered if I’d still be able to communicate with him. Whenever my dad managed to get him on whatever shitty phone line they bother to set up for them out in the new homelands, he always spoke to Grandpa in elven. Apparently I spoke elven a lot more when I was a kid, but now I can barely string two words together. Maybe, like with mom, he would barely be able to understand me at all.
The thought made me really sad, so sad that I could feel the sadness like a lump at the bottom of my stomach. I had to walk around the neighborhood a few times before the lump started to go away.
Eventually, my emo wanderings brought back me downtown, close to where I’d bought the cachitos and cupcakes. I popped back into the Venezuelan shop as they were winding down for the night and bought out all their day-olds, a big ol’ paper bag full of them, good for all my lunches for this week. I also picked up another carton of the amazing dulce de leche cupcakes. Those would be a real shame to let go to waste. Plus they seemed like they’d be good to scarf down Bridget Jones style in my underpants in front of a sad movie.
I walked out into the spring night again, dragging my feet and my purchases homeward. I didn’t actually feel up to sitting alone in my apartment eating cupcakes and feeling sorry for myself. Doing stuff like that can be kind of fun if you’re not really taking it seriously, but I know from experience that in a mood like this one, it usually just makes me feel worse. And really alone. The alone part is what can really push you over the deep end.
My neighborhood was slowly creeping into view. My toes were frozen stiff in my leather boots and my arm was starting to ache from clutching the big bag of bread. Overall, it was looking to be a pretty depressing night.
Then I came up next to a familiar condo building. I stopped and looked up into windows filled with orange light. It looked nice and warm in there. I wondered if the people in there were alone too or if they were enjoying their lives alongside people they knew and loved.
Without really thinking about it, I got my phone out and flipped through my contacts. Then I called Mahendra. I stood there in the dark, watching the shadows move back and forth in the orange rooms.
When he answered, his voice was very warm and happy. It was nice to hear him so close to my ear.
“Good evening, Toriv.”
“Hey, you. How would you feel if I dropped by unexpectedly?”
A pause, then he said, in an even happier and warmer voice, “I think I’d like that. Just as long as you don’t mind me in my pyjamas.”
“Oh, but if you’re just about to go to bed–“
“No, no, I’ve been in my pyjamas all day. As it happens.” He cleared his throat. “When are you coming by?”
“Uh, well, I’m technically right outside your building right now. Not in a weird way,” I added quickly, which definitely made it sound like it was in a weird way. “I’ve been walking around a lot today. Was heading home. Decided I didn’t feel like being alone.”
He waited a little bit, maybe processing what I was saying, maybe waiting to see if I was really finished. I tried to sound silently nonchalant, like it didn’t really matter either way, but the moment of quiet made me nervous, so I had to add, “Only if you really don’t mind. Actually, never mind, I shouldn’t be bothering you. And I should definitely not be standing outside your apartment like a weirdo. Me being out here is probably bringing down the property value as we speak.”
“Don’t be silly,” he said quietly. He has the kind of voice that makes you stop and listen, even when he says things as gentle as can be. “You’re not bothering me and I do want you here. Why don’t you just come up?”
“Um. Sure. Thanks.”
He buzzed me in and I went, squeezing my bag of bread like it could protect me from my own feelings. When I got to his floor, Mahendra was waiting for me in his open doorway, dressed in PJs and slippers and an extremely fancy bathrobe. Dunno how he managed to make me feel underdressed when he was literally dressed for bed, but there you go.
“Hey,” I said faintly. The lump in my stomach had moved up to my throat, so it was hard to talk.
“Hey, yourself,” he said. “Long time, no see.”
“Yeah, it’s been what, a whole twenty four hours? Don’t know why we ever go so long without seeing each other.”
“Yes, I can’t imagine why.”
He smiled and gestured me into the apartment. I shuffled in and tried kicking my boots off without actually bothering to undo the laces. He plucked my paper bag from me to make my life easier and peeked in as I continued to wrestle with my shoes.
“Groceries?”
“Bread. Literally just a whole pile of stuffed bread.” I yanked my left boot off with a grunt and dropped it to the floor. “Don’t know what I was thinking.”
“Probably that they look very yummy,” he said cheerfully.
“Speaking of yummy…”
I held my box of Bridget Jones cupcakes out to him too. His eyes got wide and interested.
“I got you some cupcakes. Dulce de leche flavour. They’re to die for.”
The look of wonder and excitement on his face was probably the cutest darn thing I’ve ever seen in my life. It was just like when I had gotten him the Café Vanellas signature hot chocolate or when we had sat together for pho. Maybe this is dumb, but I like people more when I know they love food as much as I do.
By this time, I had actually managed to get my boots off and had placed them neatly by the door, so they wouldn’t ruin his nice hardwood floor. Mahendra managed to tear himself away from the cupcakes long enough to help me out of my coat, which he hung up in his little hall closet. Up close he smelled really nice, warm and freshly washed, so it was easy to just give in, to lean until my body was nudging against his.
He looked at me, then he turned and his arms came up around me. We just stood there for a bit, me in his arms with my head leaning against his shoulder, his hands warm on my back. His bathrobe was fantastically soft.
After a few seconds, I started to wonder why he wasn’t pulling away. I wondered why I wasn’t pulling away either. I’m not touch-phobic by any stretch of the imagination and I definitely appreciate a good hug, but lingering like this in someone’s space isn’t really my thing. Any other guy I know would already be making fun of me, then I guess I would turn it into a dirty joke and get out of it that way. Not Mahendra, though. He just stood there and held me right up against his own body, so close I could feel him breathing. Honestly, it was kind of amazing.
This went on for another little while, then I made myself move. He let me go, but his fingertips lingered on my biceps.
“Why’d you hug me like that?” I asked.
“It seemed like you needed it,” he said. Like it was obvious, like it was something everybody did. “Are you all right?”
I shrugged like it was no big deal, but I couldn’t really look at him. I felt his hand brush my cheek and place a strand of hair back behind my ear.
“Let’s eat some cupcakes,” he suggested. “I’ll make tea.”
I followed him into the kitchen, where he put the kettle on, picked up a gorgeous little glazed teapot, shook out some tea leaves and dropped them into the pot. As I watched, he rinsed out the steaming leaves in the pot, then poured the wash water out and added some fresh hot water for steeping. After two minutes, he poured the tea into a pair of little matching teacups in the same dreamy green-blue glaze as the pot. To make myself useful, I had warmed up two of the cupcakes and put them on a pretty flowered plate from his china cabinet.
“Oh, scrumptious,” Mahendra said as we settled at the table.
“And you haven’t even tasted them yet.”
I carefully unwrapped one of the golden cupcakes from its paper suit and held it out to him. He took it with the reverence that was appropriate for such a beautiful dessert and took a big bite. He put his fingertips to his mouth as he chewed.
“Good?” I asked him smugly.
He nodded enthusiastically and swallowed before declaring, “Fantastic!”
I laughed. “It’s adorable how much you love sweets.”
He looked embarrassed and took a swig of his tea. Then he looked pleased.
“Try it with the tea.”
I did as he asked. He had brewed a kind of black tea, Earl Grey judging from the perfumy lavender notes. The earthiness of the tea cut the sweetness of the dulce de leche just enough. I wouldn’t have thought it would make such a great combination, but that just shows how much I still have to learn.
“Amazing,” I sighed. “I love food.”
He agreed with his eyes. We kept on eating in silence for a bit, enjoying our individual cupcake-and-tea experiences. My knee jittered under the table. I tried telling it sternly that it had to stop, but it just kept jittering. Rude.
Once the cupcakes were done, Mahendra got up to put the extras in the fridge then went to make another pot of tea. I watched him from the kitchen table, my chin in my hand.
“Hey,” I said suddenly. “Remember that thing we talked about yesterday? About language and culture and stuff.”
“Yes, of course.”
“Like…is it supposed to be depressing to think about it? I don’t want to feel shitty whenever I think too hard about it, but I can’t help it. It gets to me.”
He paused just long enough to pour the next share of hot water into the pot, then he turned to me. His eyes were full of concern, like a worried puppy. A worried friend, I guess.
“Do you mean the fact that you don’t speak elven?” he asked.
I shrugged. “I guess. That’s part of it, for sure. I mean, when I was a kid I was super close to my grandpa. Stuck to him like glue, did everything he did and spoke our language to him and everything. But now it’s all gone. Everything I could have ever learned from him as an adult…it’ll never happen.”
I had to stop. My voice stuck in my throat like a whole-ass olive was trying to go down the wrong tube. I tried to take a sip of tea to get it down, but my cup was empty.
I felt Mahendra’s eyes on me from across the kitchen, but I didn’t really feel up to meeting his gaze. After a tense couple seconds, he back came over and placed his hand really gently on my shoulder. I just tried to concentrate on breathing.
“It isn’t your fault,” he said kindly. “Clan Vanellas…isn’t there a story, from the end of the gods’ war–“
“Yeah,” I said roughly. “But the gods didn’t make us forget our language. It was up to us…to people like me…to keep at least that going. But I dropped the ball.”
My eyes felt like someone had just thrown a handful of sand in them. I was getting way too upset and a small part of my brain was yelling at me to get a grip, but I couldn’t. I turned away from Mahendra, from the whole room, literally turned in my chair so none of them had to see me losing my mind over something so stupid.
There was a really awkward silence. I was holding my breath so I wouldn’t be able to cry. I didn’t even know what exactly I was crying over. Was it the whole grandpa thing, or the conversation with my parents, or my mess of feelings over Mahendra, or just the embarrassment and shame over all of these things? Why was my head choosing now of all moments to turn into an absolute jumble of craziness? Mahendra didn’t need to see me crazy. No one does. No one should.
“Dang,” I managed to choke out. “Worst third date ever, huh?”
Behind me, Mahendra made a sound halfway between a laugh and a sigh. “Not the worst I’ve been on, trust me.”
I felt him move a tiny bit closer, so close I could feel his body heat against my back. Then he placed both hands on my shoulders, his thumbs pressing lightly against the back of my neck.
“Listen,” he said in a careful voice. “Words aren’t everything. When two people are truly close, then it doesn’t matter if it’s oceans or languages that lie between them. Your grandfather will understand you because you’re family. That’s all.”
I must have had some reaction, like a shiver or a hiccup, because he started rubbing little circles into my nape. It felt good. It gave me something to think about besides how dumb I felt.
I said, “It’s funny. I kind of almost believe you.”
“It’s a start. Try it yourself if you don’t trust my word on it.”
“No, I trust you.” I sniffed hard, like a little kid. “I mean I trust your word and you. You’re extremely trustworthy.”
“Thank you.”
“Just so you know, I don’t usually get this emotional over cupcakes. I’ve had kind of a weird day.”
“Of course. Completely understandable.”
“At the risk of making this even weirder, I’d really like to kiss you right now.”
I twisted around to look up at him over my shoulder. It was a weird angle to be looking at him from, but I still caught the slow smile that was spreading over his face.
He moved back so I could get up out of the chair. I gave him a little poke in the middle of the chest to make him move back more, until he was up against the other chair and understood that I wanted him to sit. The moment he did, I pushed myself onto his lap and got to business.
The first time you have a full-blown drooling makeout with someone is always an exciting moment. It doesn’t matter if you’ve known him for two weeks or two hours, there’s just something good and fun and weird about getting your face all up in someone else’s. Especially when they’re hot. Especially when they kiss you back with as much enthusiasm as Mahendra was now.
His lap was really comfortable. I felt him bracing against the floor so he could bear my weight properly. His hands shifted around on my body, slowly and methodically, like he was having a little look-see, so to speak. They had started at my back and waist but now they settled just at the tops of my thighs, fingers spread to keep me steady. Gods, it was nice. It was just what I needed.
He moved his hands back to my hips as we came up for air. When I shifted back to look at his face, his eyes were still closed. I touched one finger to the bridge of his glasses and his eyes flew open. His eyes were a deep brown, with golden reflections from the kitchen lights.
“Well, well, well,” I said, feeling the grin pull at my lips. “You’re an old hat.”
“Emphasis on ‘old’,” he pointed out. “But yes. Seems it’s a bit like riding a bike.”
“You’re not old-old! Forty is the new thirty, right?”
“If you say so.”
“I do.”
I leaned forward again to press a kiss under his round human ear. He shivered and wrapped his arms around my waist.
“Who cares about age,” I whispered, “when we can make each other feel like that?”
He said “Mmm” and ducked his face against my shoulder. I felt him nosing against my shirt.
“Want more?” I asked him.
He didn’t answer for a second. His head was still down against my shoulder. I brought a hand up and stroked it through his curly, fluffy hair.
When he looked up, his expression had changed. The haze of pleasure was still in his eyes, but underneath it he looked anxious. There was something he wasn’t saying. I had sensed it the night before, when I had tried and failed to be invited in. I still wasn’t sure if I should ask about it. Hard to know how to react when a guy looks so afraid of something he hasn’t even said yet.
“I should tell you something,” he said finally.
I slipped off his lap and back into a chair. He bunched his fingers up in the sleeves of his bathrobe.
“I’m listening,” I said, when he didn’t say anything.
“It might change your opinion of me,” he said.
“Why, are you an axe murderer?”
“No, but–“
“A cult leader?”
“N-No–“
“A cannibal? I don’t mean the old world kind, I mean the creepy Mads Mikkelsen kind.”
A tiny smile broke through his worried face. “Not that either, creepy or otherwise.”
“Okay, so I should be good. What’s up?”
Now that I had run out of jokes, I was starting to get nervous. What if he told me he was already attached, married, with kids? It’s happened before. I can be a lot of things, but I don’t like being anyone’s side chick. It sounds exciting on TV and stuff, but in real life it basically sucks all around, except maybe for the married asshole in question.
But he didn’t seem the type and his apartment was clearly an elevated bachelor pad, so I just waited. He was a genuinely nice guy, so how bad could it be?
Mahendra shuffled around in his chair for a bit, then he suddenly jumped up and ran for the teapot. Guess he’d been letting it steep too long. I waited for him to come back to the table, but raised my eyebrows at him to let him know he was starting to be kind of weird.
“Sorry,” he muttered into the teacups.
I accepted my new cupful from him and said, “It’s fine. I can take it, whatever it is. I’m a big boy.”
“You’ve just been terribly upset, I shouldn’t–“
“Dude, I said it’s fine. You listened to me. We made out. I feel better.”
For some reason, that made him look even guiltier. I pulled on his wrist to make him sit again and scooted my chair closer to his side of the table.
“It’s clearly been bothering you. Just spit it out already.”
“I’m not what I seem,” he said really quickly. “On the outside.”
“Okay. Elaborate–?”
“I’m trans,” he said just as fast. His hands held onto his tea cup really tight. “I’m transgender. I was born a woman. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you before.”
His words hung in the air for a long second. Soneone’s dog barked out in the distance. The fridge buzzed. Mahendra held onto his cup so hard his knuckles were turning white.
“I’m sorry,” he said again, in the tiniest sorriest voice.
I sat back in my chair. Then I sat forward again, because I didn’t want him to think I was moving away from him. He was looking straight down into his tea. The tea was fresh and hot, so his hands were probably burning.
Slowly, I reached out and touched his tightly interlaced fingers. His hands came apart suddenly, like a rope had just slackened.
“Is that it?” I asked him.
His head jerked up, his eyes wide behind his glasses. Beautiful, brown, gentle, scared eyes.
I took his hand and wrapped my fingers around his.
I said, “What, did you think I was going to freak out? Call you names? Do something awful? It’s the twenty-first century, bro. We all got bigger things to worry about than who’s got what kind of junk.”
The tension in his shoulders lowered just a little.
“Still,” he said. His eyes traveled across my face, like he was looking for a lie. “Some people still…especially gay men, sometimes.”
“Well, I’m not one of them,” I told him firmly. “And I’ll beat anyone who tries to tell you you’re anything less than you are. Beat ’em with my tiny stick arms.”
He cracked a smile then. Just a little one, but it was a start. I rubbed his knuckles with my other hand, like he had rubbed my neck when I felt bad.
“No worries, okay? No worries, no worries. See, I rubbed them all away.”
He laughed then, a little giggle under his breath. Then he gave a big sigh and shook his head.
“Sorry, it’s just such an emotional subject. I never do get used to telling people. And, um…” He rubbed my hand back and looked sheepish. “I usually tell them before I’ve kissed them the first couple of times.”
“Nooo worries. You told me now. Maybe I would have been a little more shocked if you had waited until I was taking your clothes off…uh, unless…?”
“No,” he said quickly. “I haven’t…everything down there is the original architecture, so to speak. My breasts and uterus are gone. The rest is hormones.”
“Oooh. Cool.”
He looked at me sideways, a smile tugging on his mouth. “Cool?”
“Yeah, cool! The wonders of science, man. But yo, how come your voice is so much deeper than mine? I probably had like years of a headstart on you.”
He definitely laughed that time. His hand tightened around mine. “That’s genetics. I got lucky, is all.”
“Then I guess it was meant to be.”
He smiled then covered his mouth with his palm. I patted our joined hands soothingly.
“Whew,” I said. “It sure is a night for intense conversations, huh? Actually, there’s something I’ve been meaning to ask you. Do you actually like dudes? Or am I the big exception?”
He looked at me with bright eyes and his funny little British smile. “I’m sorry to tell you this, but you’re not exactly the exception to the rule.”
“Aww, dang.”
“I actually like dudes. And women too. And it’s the second time I’ve had to say that today.”
“You on a coming out spree?”
“It happens sometimes,” he murmured.
His face was getting close to mine again, so I met him halfway and planted one on him. This time when he kissed me, he was all in. No more holding back. No more fear in his eyes at all.
Before long, I was in his lap again. The tea probably got really cold. I don’t think either of us cared.
\\ Mahendra
I woke up on Sunday morning rather early, far too early for having spent half the night wandering the streets and eating pho at midnight. Somehow my body managed to reach for my phone and type out a little good morning message to Toriv, which I absolutely did not recall writing until I checked my messages later that day. I dozed the rest of the morning away, dreaming contented dreams of good food and even better company. I woke up properly when the sun was high in the early spring sky, to an insistent buzzing from my mobile and a matching Skype bleep from my computer in the next room. It seemed I was suffering an onslaught on all fronts from my two nieces.
A text from Celeste: Good morning, uncle!!
A text from Anastasia: Minecraft, uncle
Another text from Celeste: Minecraft, Minecraft
When I stumbled over to my laptop, which had been idling on the coffee table, the open Skype conversation I share with Celeste and Anastasia was blinking and chiming insistently. Minecraft, Minecraft, Minecraft, now, uncle!!
All right, Minecraft, I typed blearily, just give me ten minutes.
When I emerged from the bathroom and was putting on the kettle for tea, I got an additional text from my sister Charlotte: Sorry for the girls. It’s raining in London and they’ve been cooped up all weekend.
It’s no trouble, I answered, smiling. And when isn’t it, honestly?
Maybe we should spend our holiday in Montreal after all. I hear it gets so lovely and sunny in the summer.
It does. It also gets terrifically humid. A bit like Delhi.
Oh, Lord. Still tempting, though.
I chuckled and brought my tea over to the sofa, then pulled out my mouse and clicked over to Minecraft. The girls had supplied me with the server number, so I logged in and joined them in their virtual world. At the same time, I started the voice call, so we could communicate without bothering to type.
“You’re not wearing your skin,” Celeste said by way of greeting.
“My skin?”
“The one we engineered for you,” Anastasia said impatiently. She was eight years old and possessed of a stunning vocabulary, being a big reader, but sometimes I feared her smarts gave her a bit more attitude than necessary.
When my only response was a questioning grunt, they both sighed. One of them sent me a file via the Skype window, along with instructions on how to upload it to my game so I could change the look of my character.
“Honestly,” Annie added, as though I’d committed a great misdeed.
When my avatar reappeared in the world, it had dark skin and dark hair, which was already much more accurate to me than the default character. When I took a walk in a circle to stretch my virtual limbs, I saw that the girls had also drawn a little pair of glasses on my avatar’s face. Adorable.
“I feel ready for anything,” I declared. I made my character do a little jump for emphasis.
Celeste’s Minecraft representation also had dark skin and was dressed in a flowery pink dress. Annie’s character looked like a clown, complete with big red nose and multicoloured wig.
“Why doesn’t yours look like you?” I asked her.
“It’s my defense system. Enderman’s afraid of clowns.”
“Why would Enderman be afraid of clowns?” Celeste demanded.
Annie’s avatar advanced on Celeste’s. Celeste backed away hurriedly, shrieking. I winced at the overloud sound coming from my feeble laptop speakers.
“See?” Annie said smugly.
“You’re a pest.”
“Now, now,” I said soothingly. “Play nice with your sister or I’m logging off.”
“Nooooo,” Celeste said pleadingly. “You have to help us build our glass castle.”
“It’s almost finished,” Annie said. “But we need more glass blocks. Can you start getting some sand from the beach?”
I went about my duty, shuttling cubes of sand from the beach to the smithy built into the side of the nearest mountain. The area had been developed since I’d last seen it. Now there was a vast wheat field under the great glass castle being constructed on the mountain, where oddly-shaped pigs and sheep roamed and presumably grazed. There was also a village presiding over the field. In the distance, I could see more block people milling about among the houses.
“Are those monsters?”
“No, they’re villagers. They…do stuff, I guess.”
“Annie just likes to kill them.”
“Yeah, sometimes.”
“That’s not a very nice way to rule,” I pointed out.
“She isn’t nice. She is a tyrrrant.” Celeste said the latter with a distinct Indian inflection, which is what she does when she really wants to annoy people.
Fortunately or unfortunately, Anastasia is very easily moved to annoyance. She growled “Shut it” with all the venom a little girl can muster, but before I could intercede Celeste said, “You shut it! You’ll kill all the villagers again if you don’t stop. I’ll take apart your underground railway.”
“Don’t touch it!”
“Then stop ruining the game!”
“You’re ruining it by making all your stupid rules–“
“Girls! Peace!” I had to raise my voice to be heard over their tinny shouting from the computer speakers. “Make up immediately or I shall kill your villagers and take apart your railways.”
It was an empty threat, as I had no idea how to do either, but the girls seemed convinced. There was a moment of utter silence, then Celeste whispered, “You wouldn’t dare.”
Anastasia cackled. “Uncle Mahendra is a tyrant too!”
After the sisterly tussle subsided, we settled into proper gaming mode. The girls gave me instructions and helpful tips whenever I forgot which keystroke did what. I had gotten not so bad at Minecraft by that point, memorizing all the important crafting recipes and such, though I was still in the unfortunate habit of falling down holes and meeting my untimely doom at the bottom.
“Drat,” I said aloud as my bespectacled avatar tumbled, yet again, into a black abyss.
You have died, the game informed me.
“What happened?” Celeste asked distractedly. She was building an automated something or other at the opposite end of the map. Annie was probably off spearing villagers or innocent block animals.
“Death by falling. Again.”
I sighed as my character returned to life in its bed within the base. I rather felt like going back to bed myself. Celeste made an amused sound. It was a much more grownup sound than I was used to hearing from her. I always forget that she’s on the cusp of teenagehood. Or I try to forget. The idea of my as-of-yet adoring nieces outgrowing me is something I’m not quite ready to face, so I turned my mind to more palatable ideas, like retrieving my lost equipment. It was a task only slightly more palatable than wrestling with my early and extremely misplaced empty nest syndrome.
“I don’t understand,” I complained, “why I always need to go back to find my things. In other games, when you die, it just turns back time. No harm done.”
Annie gave her raucous little giggle. “That’s other games. Minecraft is more like real life.”
“Except 3D,” Celeste added.
“Is real life not also three dimensional?”
“Nooo.”
“Obviously.”
“It’s infinite dimensional.”
“My mistake,” I said humbly, to more giggles. “I’ll have to catch up on my theoretical physics.”
I meandered around a while, sipping my tea as I searched for a way to reach the bottom of the crevasse without breaking my virtual head open a second time. I finally managed to slink down by digging my way in a rough downwards spiral. I also remembered to bring a torch with me, as I wasn’t keen on a repeat of the time I had accidentally dug myself into a dark hole and was subsequently ambushed by zombies in the most nightmarish way possible.
Work resumed once I had retrieved all my scattered belongings and safely made it out of the hole. As I was ferrying more sand blocks to the furnaces for the great glass castle project, Celeste asked me, “Have you decided when you’re coming home for summer holidays yet, uncle?”
I made a non-commital noise and loudly sipped my tea. “Not yet, pet. There’s my grad students and all, even during the summer. And besides–” I scrabbled frantically for an excuse that wouldn’t disappoint them too much. “–there isn’t all that much to do in London, is there?”
“We could go to the British Museum? Or to see my horse.”
“Or to Brighton,” Annie suggested. “If Grandmama lets us take the train. Just, summery things. It doesn’t matter where.”
The hopefulness in their voices made me feel very ashamed. I couldn’t believe it had come to the point where my young nieces had to try to convince me to come home, when normally I should have been the one raring to see them. I stared into the computer screen, suddenly glad that the girls hadn’t turned on video chat, and wished that the virtual ground would swallow up my Minecraft character as penance.
“Your mum said you might be coming here on holiday,” I said weakly. It wasn’t strictly true, but… “Would you like that? To come visit me in Montreal? It’ll be something different. I’ll show you all my favourite places.”
Truthfully, there weren’t all that many except for the few restaurants I regularly frequented, the university, the fine arts museum, and the national library. The Café Vanellas came into mind as well, and with it the mischievous crooked-toothed smile of its owner. A cheering image, but right now, it wasn’t much help.
There was quiet as the girls considered this. Mechanically, I gathered more sand. Celeste and Annie’s avatars busied themselves over and around the blocky hills.
Finally, as I was beginning to feel truly wretched, Annie asked, “Can we get beaver tails?”
“And poutine?” Celeste added.
“And go to that lovely tea shop you sent us a photo of once?”
“Of course,” I replied, relieved despite myself. “Anything you’d like. All my treat.”
“I want to go to the vintage shops,” Celeste declared. “All the ones in the Plateau.”
“Yeah, and get me a cool old leather jacket like in the movies.”
“My, someone’s been doing their research. Have you been Googling my town?”
“Well, we haven’t gotten to visit it since we were babies,” Celeste said. “I’ve been telling Mum we should go there instead, but Grandmama and Grandpapa always want us here.”
“I’ll talk to them,” I promised. “There must be some way to get you to visit me. Even if I have to pay an international spy to get you out.”
The girls squealed at the notion of escaping their grandparents in such a dramatic fashion and began immediately debating about the best skills for an international spy. These included “excellent fashion” and “the ability to eat a lot”, in case said spy needed to go undercover in a five star restaurant, I imagine.
“Will we get to meet your friends?” Annie asked next.
“I’m sure I don’t know what you mean, pet.”
“Don’t act daft with us, uncle, it won’t work. Your friends. You know, people you hang out with so you don’t have to talk about boring work things.”
Frantically, I tried to think of a friend my nieces wouldn’t be bored to tears with within fifteen minutes. The only person I could think of was my office mate at the college, also an anthropology professor, who was a very nice woman but probably not someone who would make riveting company for two energetic and argumentative young girls.
Quickly, you awful uncle with the big fat brain. Who are the most interesting people you know right now?
“Erm,” I said eventually. “Well, there is this café I go to…”
Both girls said “oooh” like this was terribly intriguing, probably because neither of them are allowed to drink coffee yet. Celeste commanded, “Show us. Google Maps!”
A click and a hop later, we were all staring at the Google Streets view of the Café Vanellas. The cheery green sign was already in place, but otherwise the place looked barer than normal. Perhaps the photo was taken just at the opening of the shop, a couple of years ago. Just the sight of the place was enough to lift my heart a little. Lord, but I really was besotted if even the sight of his workplace was enough to put a silly grin on my face.
“Do you drink coffee, uncle?”
“A little. There’s a nice drink called a mocha that they make there, it’s coffee and chocolate–“
“We know what a mocha is.”
“Shut up, Annie. It looks cute. Do you know anyone who works there?”
“I know a few people who work there. The baristas. And the owner. His name is Toriv.”
“Is he elven?”
“Yes, he’s a Vanellas elf. He’s…well, he’s very kind. And…I should tell you…”
I hesitated. All my life, I’ve waited for and dreaded this sort of moment, especially where the girls are involved. I’ve tried never to lie to them, about myself or anything else, but things can get complicated where children are involved, or rather where the guardians of these children are.
Still, my sister is a fantastic mother, as loving and caring as she can be. The girls are fantastic and loving as well, the very best little girls I know. And they already know so much about me that they’ve accepted without a thought. It’s been a long time since I’ve been someone like that, a being made of pure love.
I thought of that, and of all the ways I wished people had spoken to me when I was young, and knew with certainty that it would be fine.
“…I should tell you, girls. This boy named Toriv, I’ve sort of been seeing him.”
Silence, but for the sound of little brain cogs turning.
Annie said, “You mean with your eyes?”
I laughed. A brilliant eight-year-old is still an eight-year-old. Next time, I’d take the road less fraught with silly adult euphemisms.
“Annie!” Celeste chided. “He means they’ve been dating. They’ve gone on dates. Right, uncle?”
“Yes, that’s right.”
“Ooooh,” Annie said, comprehension audibly dawning. She thought about it some more. Then she said, quite briskly, “So are you gay?”
“Well, if you really want to get into technicalities, I’m bisexual. I mean, I like boys and girls and everyone in between. This time, it just so happens to be a boy.”
“All right. Cool.”
Annie’s clown avatar, which had paused in its activities since the conversation had taken a more serious turn, went back to whatever clowns do during a busy work day.
Annie said, with absolutely no difficulty or ceremony, “Do we get to meet your boyfriend when we visit you?”
“I–he’s not really my boyfriend. Not yet.”
“He’s not?” Celeste gasped.
“Why not?” Annie asked, exasperated. “You’ve gone on dates.“
I had to suppress a manic giggle. “Yes, pet, but it’s more complicated than that.”
“Why?”
If I knew the answer to that one, my personal life would have been a lot less chaotic over the past few weeks. I share a lot of things with my darling nieces, but the emotional stresses of adult life are not something they need to be burdened with just yet.
“Oh, you know, these things have to be done proper-like. Stars need to align and all that. I’ll get it sorted. Now who needs all these glass blocks I’ve made?”
Both avatars rushed over to collect their blocks and resume castle construction. After watching them hop about for a bit, laying the foundations for their fairy tale home and arguing in the sharp, playful way only sisters can argue, I joined them with my own pocketful of blocks. This time, I didn’t fall off anything.
After the game, as I was fixing myself a late lunch and catching up on work emails, Celeste sent me a Skype message from her individual window. It read: Thank you for telling us about Toriv. We won’t tell anyone else if you don’t want us too.
My heart felt three sizes too big. I set my fresh mug of tea down with a trembling hand and wrote back, You’re welcome, pet. You made your old uncle feel very well loved today. And you can tell your mum if you’d like.
There was a distinct danger that our parents would be the next ones to find out after Charlotte, but I’d never ask the girls to hide anything from their own mother. Even I’m not heartless enough for that.
I’ll tell Dad too! Celeste wrote. I’m sure he’d be happy for you as well.Maybe he’ll reach up into the sky and help align the stars for you.
I sat heavily back on the couch and swiped my fingertips over my eyes, under the glasses frames. All I was able to type back was Thank you, love, and all I was able to feel was utterly, completely blessed.
=====
Toriv visited that evening, quite unexpectedly. The conversation that followed left me a bit stunned, even after I’d gone to bed that night. I had done it at last, unburdened myself to him in one of the deepest, scariest ways I knew how. And he had thought it was cool.
I don’t like to hide the fact that I’m transgender. If anyone ever happened to ask, even out of the blue, I’d tell them so. I’ve been honest about it with my nieces too, since they were old enough to be aware of the differences between boys and girls. Charlotte hadn’t wanted to tell them at first, but she had relented when I had told her how important it was to me.
Fortunately, I’ve been able to fly largely under the radar for several years, so it’s not a conversation I need to have often anymore. No more accidents or misunderstandings, except those caused solely by my own dunderheadedness.
Still, one doesn’t easily shake the idea of being afraid. It becomes a thing so entrenched in your life, so tangible, that even the suggestion of danger can cause a physical response: the cold fear sweat and shaking hands of a man on the gallows, or the protective slump of the shoulders and back, to block a remembered blow. Sometimes I still feel the bruises, physical or otherwise, as though they are fresh from the day before.
It’s been years since I was lashed out at, cornered and having to defend myself. Years since I’ve had to raise my fists and throw my glasses off to the side so they wouldn’t be broken. Years since I’ve had to be sure I always had antiseptic and gauze in my medicine cabinet, just in case. But the flesh and the heart remember.
So you see now, mysterious reader of boring memoirs. Perhaps you can imagine. Perhaps you even know. If that’s the case, then I wish you didn’t. I wouldn’t wish this on anyone.
Even after the danger had failed to materialize, I still felt on edge. It took a few minutes of Toriv’s soft, eager kisses to come down from my spiral of anxiety. I don’t know if he read my fear in my movements that evening, or if he did, then I don’t know if he saw the cause. He made it seem easy and simple, the unconcerned It’s just the right thing to do attitude of the young and politically aware. I was grateful, of course, and relieved to the point of floppiness, but I knew that wasn’t the end of it.
Still, though our evening together had started out rather intensely, by its end the tension had returned to its relatively flat baseline, leaving me in a mingled state of bliss and anticipation. Kissing really is a heavenly thing, when one is so inclined. And a good and proper snog was what it seemed we both needed to distract us from our individual problems.
We ended up on the sitting room sofa sometime after my heart rate had come down from my confession in the kitchen. I had tossed my housecoat over the coffee table and had gathered Toriv into my lap again, where he seemed very happy to perch as my hands roamed over his bottom. It was lovely, but not as heated as it could have been. Now that the initial ecstasy of being seen and accepted had passed, I was pulling back again, not wanting to go too far just yet.
His lips were a little chapped from the cold but had grown soft with our loverings. When he trailed his mouth down over my neck I sighed. I wondered if the sensation of his flesh on mine would ever become familiar. I think I hoped, with perhaps a bigger part of my heart than necessary, that it would.
“You okay?” he murmured against the cleft of my collarbone.
I nodded, which of course dislodged him when my chin accidentally struck his nose. He reeled back in an exaggerated manner, yelping.
“Oh, I’m so sorry!” I said anyway.
“Boo,” he said, crossing his eyes for a moment before grinning his cat-like grin. “I was just asking. You can say if you wanna stop.”
“I do want to stop,” I admitted, but was sure to add: “For today.”
He made a pleased cat-got-the-cream sort of face. I was discovering that he was cat-like in many different ways, least of all in the manner in which he clung to me as we kissed, like a housecat demanding petting.
“Not done with me, huh?” His fingers drummed on my arm expectantly.
“Not in the least. It’s just, there’s no sense in using it all up in one go, is there?”
“If you say so,” he said.
He kissed me just under my ear, so I stroked his long elven ear in return, just a gentle skimming touch along the edge to where it ended in a point. He shivered in my arms and pushed his face against my shoulder.
“God,” he moaned. “That felt good. Why are we stopping again?”
“Because I asked you to. Sorry.”
He raised his head to give me a resentful, yearning look, so I soothed him with another quick kiss and a squeeze of the bum. Then I pushed him gently off my lap. His sigh could have moved mountains, but he consented to being displaced back onto the couch cushions. He had a sulking look in his green eyes that was terribly funny.
“Aw,” I said. “Used to getting your way, are you?”
“Yeah, I guess. You sure you don’t want some of this?”
“It’s not that I don’t.” If only he had a window into my fantasies from the past few days. “But not tonight.”
“Yeah,” he said again.
He picked up a throw pillow from the end of the sofa and very deliberately placed it over his lap. I snorted and he rolled his eyes.
“It’s basic biology, man,” he said petulantly.
I patted him on the hand. “I’m well aware of the mechanics of the penis. I’m sure you’ll live.”
He still pouted as I went to make a fresh pot of tea — the previous one had gone cold and wholly undrunk, us having had much more pressing business to do with our mouths — but soon he wandered in after me and leaned against my hip, his arm casually draped around my waist.
“Are you hungry?” I asked him. “I ate already, but there’s leftovers.”
I wanted badly to ask him to stay, but didn’t quite trust my dedication to temporary abstinence, especially when we were both still obviously thrumming with desire. He looked up at me, a long considering look that I couldn’t decipher, then he smiled and said, “Nah, I’m good. You really want me to eat your food after the rollercoaster of emotions I put us both through?”
“It wasn’t so bad,” I replied. I brushed a finger under his jaw and noted the sparkle in his eye when I did. “Besides, what’s mine is yours now.”
“Oh yeah?” he said, amused. “So what does that make us?”
I looked away under the pretense of lifting the steeping basket out of the teapot. “I don’t know. What does that make us?”
There was a pause as Toriv thought about this. The silence stretched out, longer and longer, until I stood nervously waiting for it to snap.
After a long moment, he answered my question with another: “I’m guessing you’re looking for some kind of exclusive arrangement? But I mean,” he added before I could reply, “I was wrong about you being a cute lil’ virginal type, so I could be wrong here.”
I wasn’t certain whether to be flattered or insulted, so eventually I went with: “Oh, aren’t I cute?”
Toriv laughed and nuzzled his temple against my shoulder. His hand traveled down to my behind and it took all of my willpower to keep myself from leaning back against his touch.
“You are cute,” he said. “Truly, madly, deeply. But you didn’t answer the question.”
I thought of what I had told the girls earlier, about how this kind of thing would only happen if the stars aligned. Was my brother-in-law really doing his part up there or wherever he was, reaching up to push the stars a little closer in alignment over my head? It was a silly notion, but I still couldn’t help feeling that this was as much of a bone as the universe was going to throw me, and I had better seize it before the chance escaped me.
I said to Toriv, “I’d like you to be my boyfriend. Exclusively. But with no big expectations.”
“Oh-kay?” he said. “What do you mean by big expectations?”
“I mean, none of that thirty-under-thirty relationship milestone nonsense. Just…us, and however we feel like being.”
“Ooh. So, like, just going with the flow?”
“Yeah.”
“Huh. Fair enough,” he said slowly. “I can do that. Totally. I did just go with the flow with the whole not-having-sex-although-we-clearly-really-want-to bit we just did. Yeah, no problem.”
“I’m sorry abstinence is so far out of your area of expertise,” I said with a grin. “But maybe the new experience will be good for you.”
“Well, if you’re gonna be like that, then I’m going to have to bring something shiny and new to the table too.”
“I’d like that,” I said.
He wrapped both arms around my waist. I turned in his arms to look him in the eyes. There was something I couldn’t quite read in them, a quiver of something like nervousness or fear, but it was gone the next moment.
“Sure,” Toriv said in his same assured voice. “I’ll be your boyfriend, Professor Singh. I bet we could have lots of fun together.”
“I hope so.”
My chest felt so light, like my ribcage had finally loosened enough to let free a cleansing breath. I leaned in to kiss him and felt him respond in kind. His hands threatened to bring me back for another go on the sofa, so I forced myself to lighten the kiss, to be cool, as the kids say. He resisted the separation, tried to reel me back in with lips and hands, so I cupped my fingers under his chin and placed my thumb against his lower lip. His skin gave very gently as I pressed, warm and velvet and inviting under my touch. His wide eyes roved over my face like he wasn’t sure where to look, then they settled into a new, darker expression, like a coal fire burning low. I felt an answering burn deep in my belly, a pleasant warmth that I would let smoulder in the days to come in hot and heady anticipation.
“You know,” he murmured, his bottom lip slipping under the pad of my thumb. “You might be on to something.”
I smiled and moved my thumb just enough so I could kiss him again, chastely. “Trust me. I am an old hat, after all.”
“Mmm. Then you’d better show me the advantages of having an older lover.”
“Now you’re just making me sound like a lecherous old man.”
“Aren’t you? Kidding!” he screeched when I smacked him in the arm for the slight. “You’re not that much older than me.”
“How old are you? It’s hard to tell.”
Toriv grinned and draped his arms over my shoulders, using his weight to pull me against him until we stood leaning heavily against the kitchen counter. Over his shoulder, I eyed the teapot, which was rapidly going cold again.
“I am thirty-one years old, Mister President,” he said breathily, in what I had to assume was some sort of Marilyn Monroe impression.
“Oh–” I braced my hands against the countertop so we wouldn’t go tumbling over. “That’s nearly ten years’ difference, you know.”
He shrugged, then seemed to think about it, then shrugged again, like he had decided it was fine after all. I couldn’t help the laugh that puffed out at his rapidly changing expressions. He took advantage of my moment of inattention and dragged my mouth down to his again. I really could get quickly used to this, snuggles and kisses and laughter in my warm kitchen.
When we parted, he didn’t let me pull away completely, but clung to me so that when he spoke, his lips brushed against mine, tantalizingly close.
welcome to the café Vanellas 