Coda 01 - Promises

do. But….” I hesitated. “Are you sure that’s what you want?” I hardly dared to hope. “I’m sure. Just lay here with me. Nothing else. I really just want you close. That’s all.”
    “Of course.” That did leave me with a quandary of what to do about my clothes. To undress first felt like it would be adding a level of pressure I was sure he didn’t need right now. On the other hand, I didn’t really want to sleep fully clothed. I stood there for a second, telling myself I was a fool for worrying about it. I finally pulled off my shoes and socks and T-shirt but decided to keep my pants on and climbed in beside him. I lay facing his back. We would have been spooning except for the foot of empty space between us. He sighed. Even from where I was, a foot away, I could feel some of the tension leaving him.
    “Just a little closer, okay? I want… I just want to know you’re here.”
    I moved a little closer, so that I was almost against his back, our skin barely touching. My own body was responding to the nearness of his smooth back. I made sure that part of me wasn’t against him. He didn’t need that right now. I put one arm over him. “Sleep now, okay? We can worry about everything else later.”
    His breathing was already slowing down, and I thought he might already be asleep when he said quietly, “Thank you.”
    What I thought was, I hope you still feel that way in the morning. What I said was, “Anytime.” And then he was asleep. I was awake for a long time after that, wondering what was going to happen when he woke up. Then, in his sleep, he shifted closer, leaning back against me, and made a contented sigh that made my heart break all over again. I wrapped my arm tightly around him and told myself to take my own advice. We could worry about everything else later.
    I AWOKE once in the night and got up long enough to use the john, brush my teeth, and take off my damn jeans. When I got back into bed, he immediately moved back into my arms, although he didn’t say a word. When I woke in the morning, I was surprised to see that he was still there. He was normally such an early riser that I had fully expected him to be gone by the time I woke up. The slight tension in his back and the sound of his breathing told me that he was awake. He had to be able to feel my morning erection pressing against his back side, but he didn’t move away.
    “You were talking again.”
I laughed. “What did I say this time?”
    He hesitated for a minute and then said quietly, “You said my name.”
    Still he hadn’t moved. I asked, “How do you feel?” A deep sigh, and then: “A lot better.”
“And how do you feel about this?” I tightened my arm around him a little to let him know what I meant.
    And I knew he was smiling although his voice was very quiet when he said, “A lot better.”

    My heart skipped a beat. “Really?”
    “I’ve been awake for a while, thinking. And I realized a few things.” He stopped for a moment, and I waited. “I dated quite a few girls over the years. I was attracted to them, and I even cared about a couple of them. But I never loved any of them. And the relationships just weren’t ever very satisfying. They always seemed like more trouble than they were worth. And so I gave up. I decided that I just wasn’t really cut out for it, that I liked being a bachelor, and that I wasn’t ever dating again. And actually, my life got a lot easier after that.
    “And sometimes I would be physically attracted to other men. But it wasn’t ever anybody I really knew , so I ignored it. I didn’t want those feelings, and I buried them down deep inside of me until they were gone.
    “And things were okay for a while. But you know how it is. Pretty soon, all of my friends were married. And I always felt like a fifth wheel.” Yes, I did know how that felt. “The only time I wasn’t the odd man out was when they were trying to hook me up with someone, and that was worse. So I started making excuses, quit hanging out with them. And one day I woke up and realized that they were gone.
    “So I changed jobs, and I moved here. And I met you. I was so tired of being lonely, and I was so glad to finally find somebody to just hang out with.”
    I squeezed him when he said that and whispered, “Me too.”
    “All summer, we had so much fun together, and I was so happy to have you. And that happiness just kept growing. It got bigger and bigger until it was all I thought about. Every day