Love is Always Write Anthology Volume 8

throws me is startling in its intensity. I gulp but in the next second it's gone, replaced by something wheedling as he tries to talk Paul into going home with him, like a good little boy ought. I drop my eyes and focus on my drink in a vain attempt to look nonchalant. Curt knows exactly how much I care. With every fibre of my being I hope that Paul decides to stay with me, alone.
    When I next look up, Curt has gone. Paul's watching me, bronze eyes darting nervously, flitting around my face, never meeting mine.
    "You don't have to stay." The words almost choke me, but I have to say them. It's irrational, I already know I've obligated him. My whole presence here is one great big obligation. Funny that I should be the one to guilt-trip him.
    "I want to." His smile makes my heart race. "Like old times."
    I give him a crooked grin and raise my glass. "Old times." I try to lace those words with significance. Oh to turn back the clock, climb into my DeLorean and go bitch-slap some sense into my younger self, warn him what he's throwing away. I wouldn't do it, even if I could. I didn't deserve Paulie then.
    I don't deserve him now.
    "Let's get you a real drink," I smile, standing and easing my way round the table. As I walk past him I reach out and stroke his cheek, a gesture that's artfully casual. Paul's used to it, I was always tactile. He's asked me not to touch him in front of Curt, he says it caused a fight. Good , my inner home-wrecker thinks, but I respect his wishes. He deserves to be with a man who recognised how wonderful he was the second he saw him, even if that man is Curt. Even if it kills me.
    I return with double vodka cokes and a couple of shots for good measure. He protests and stalls, but he knocks them back the same as I do. With Curt gone it's like teacher's left the classroom, and chaos ensues. We're seventeen again, high on life. All we need is each other. I grab his hand and drag him to the small, crowded dance floor, elbowing bodies aside to make a space for us. He presses close, hands loosely holding my waist as I lead us through a series of elaborate and ostentatious moves, a parody of our younger selves.
    This is why I came back, this right here: the warm buzz of vodka, the thumping beat in my veins, Paul's arms around me as we dance and laugh, mouths pressed right into ears as we bitch about the men around us. The smell of him surrounds me until I'm swimming in it, shampoo and cologne and laundry detergent and him, just him , encasing me, his slim fingers light on my hips, his stubble wonderfully scratchy against my cheek. This could be any Friday night of my adolescence except for one thing: I'm hard.
    I never got hard like this dancing with Paul before. Then again, this is the first time we've danced since I realised that he's the love of my fucking life. I keep nudging him back, holding his hips to keep our groins apart so he won't notice. All I want to do is yank him forward and grind into him, watch his eyes widen and his pupils dilate as he realises. See if his body still responds to me in the way it once did, back in the days before I knew that he was my whole world.
    I realise that I'm staring at his lips, projecting my hopeless desire for any fool to see. Luckily Paul seems oblivious, his eyes a little out of focus. He never did drink as much as me. I turn my head and close my eyes, pretending to lose myself in the techno beat of some obscure clubmix. Truth is, I'm already lost.
    I don't remember the exact moment that I knew I loved him. No light bulb pinged on, there was no eureka! in the bath. It gnawed at me slowly, building from the misery I felt that third week without him when I was laid up and wallowing in enough self-pity to admit that I missed him like a limb. It was an ache that never really went away, no matter where I was or who I was with. No friend could ever be as close to me as Paul so I didn't try to replace him, knowing in advance that the effort would be futile, and I'd never trusted a lover with so much as my surname. There was no fear I was ever going to be swept off my feet by Prince Charming.
    Someone knocks us and we stumble into each other, bodies pressed full-length together for a handful of seconds before we pull apart and I turn to berate the clumsy drunk. Paulie rubs a flat palm across my chest as he turns me back to him and my nipples sizzle at the inadvertent contact. I let him drop calming words into my ear, enjoying the texture and the timbre of his