What ruckus. A pleasant ruckus, at least—all cacophony of voices and childish laughter, Lea so at ease with his son and daughter. They couldn’t imagine how this would have gone without his presence—warm, solid, so attuned to his children—that it almost left them green with envy. This had never come easy, parenthood. How could it? Their father was patient but silent, and Terry had learned to be silent in kind. No pattern to emulate but quietude, precision. Even their family trips were marked by quiet: the lush Catskills greenery, woodlands enveloped in fog, birds gliding past, slopes bathed in golden light.
Micah could have benefited from someone like Lea for a father, they mused. But Terry had never seen the point of bringing any man home, not when people often lost interest at the mention of their son. The shift was often visible in their faces, and those that surpassed that initial barrier were often such a shame—too much fumbling in the dark, slurred speech, and inexpert tongues—that they, too, had found the appeal receding as soon as it came.
Far easier to go at their own pace. And, anyway, no one quite understood them, how their brain had always demanded everything to be retranslated before it could be understood, how they’d then recalibrate their response, their own way of living, in kind. Too exhausting to explain. Too lonely it had made their existence.
Yet here, in this town, it felt different. Different, too, in how people treated them—their differences as no longer something to be smoothed over or shaken out, but something to be tended to, and even respected. With talk of Annie came the other figures—of Rory, Jack, of this social circle they’d made for themselves in Forest Lake. Certainly colored by complication, the lot of them, each with their own ghosts that were as of now unearthed.
“I have met Annie, Diego,” they began, catching the boy’s eye and watching his face promptly light up at her mention, “Annie and her father have been over to my house for dinner. Would you like that sometime?” Invitations upon invitations. In the absence of Micah, they couldn’t quite stop.
“Papi, can we go over to Terry’s, please? I said please!”
They already knew Lea’s answer. When it came to children, it was difficult to say no.
“Does Terry get a kiss too?”
Diego’s question pulled them from their drifting thoughts. Their instinct was to say no, but—oh, it was so difficult to say no.
So, no, Terry doesn’t get a kiss, if only by technicality. Not when it was Terry who’d closed that gap first, to accept Lea’s wildflowers with one hand and to spool the fabric of his shirt just above his navel with the other, pulling him in. They pressed a hard kiss to the edge of Lea’s far too-bright smile, just to the left where the muscles of his lips ended, and the rough line of his jaw began.
Behind them, an exaggerated ugh! came from Leandro’s daughter. “Oh, gross, Papi!” Lupita squealed, covering her eyes—though it was for naught.
Funny, Terry thought, couldn’t remember the last time they’d kissed a man. Months, maybe. Years. More than a decade since it had actually mattered or had been this deliberate. Flings with men, after Severine, had been minimal and painful and best left for dead. They’d almost forgotten what it felt like, how the sensation of stubble overpowered everything else. Almost—and their desire, however, displaced against the vast expanse of the forest, began to wane. Only, they did not have the full picture yet, did they? Barely anything. Only jaw and stubble against the soft contours of their mouth, like rough-hewn wood against soft skin, the sensation of tree bark against their back.
Another attempt. A ghost of a smile, here, as they pulled him closer for another time: motion deliberate, studied. The hand that held the wildflowers rose to tuck the flowers above his ear, then back down to his cheek. The textured grit of stubble again: better now that they’d acclimated to it.
The other hand, still spooled around his shirt, pulled him closer to Terry still.
They closed the gap again. Another testing of the waters—no. Not quite like sinking. Recalled the sensation of a cigarette, how they’d put the stick between their lips and take a long drag, letting the controlled burn take over. They stroked his face beneath their fingers, the delicate contours of his cheekbones. The soft ridge above his eyelids, fluttering, as he finally registered what was happening. The sensations of mouths moving. The curve of his upper lips, warm against their own. A swipe of the tongue. They couldn’t tell who gasped first. It might have been Leandro, and they’d swallowed his exhale, almost gravelly, in their mouth. The kiss was over before Lea could move his lips to keep up. Any second more would border on obscene, especially with other people as witnesses.
But, mostly, it was over because Terry Lowenstein had decided it was over. They might be cautious, or tentative, but never not the one in control.
“Your father gets a kiss,” they corrected, releasing their hold over him and adjusting themselves back towards the tree stump. Space but not distance. “He’s very pretty, isn’t he?” Terry raised their hand to the great white trilliums, tucked now behind his ear, Leandro himself the undergrowth from which the flowers were plucked. “Papi, Terry just called you pretty!” The forest air was punctured again by hearty giggles.
Terry waited until he’d settled back on the stump. Closer now, they thought. Head tilting to his side, almost accommodating, stray curls clinging to his bare shoulder, like edges of spider silk. A hand moved to meet the small of his back, away from view, stroking the fabric there, his muscles taut beneath their fingers.
Is it so wrong, to have missed it? They don’t remember the last time a man’s kiss had ever felt comforting, if at all, or have such an encouraging band of witnesses in these displays of affection. Men had never kept their interest long enough. No one had kept their interest long enough—until Severine who broke through the stillness of the surface that concealed the enormity of their desire, the pulse points still hammering, crude but welcome, beneath their skin. Ten years, underwater. Alive again.
Nothing like it with Lea. Nothing like it with anyone but Sev, for that matter. Terry had not expected there to be, and yet—what had he said? Would that satisfy you? Lea had seemed malleable enough for the taking. Hard, but pliant, and not too easy to break.
“I can think of other things that would satisfy me, if you want,” they raised their lips to his ear, voice just above a murmur, not unlike the trills of birdsong, “Tell me when I should come over tonight.”
The sun was strong today. Too strong. Leandro’s features too clear and punctuated in the light. Brown hair and brown eyes and brown everything. The dark was another thing. They stilled their hand before turning their back to the children. “So? How was everyone’s food?”
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