twenty-something

Make The Man | A Story By Patrick Raymond
Part One, Section One: "Pieces"

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Sunlight made its way through the crack between the closed curtains. It crept into the small, cluttered room, disrupting the quiet May morning stillness. One of those fugitive rays aimed itself directly at my upturned face. I tightly clenched my eyes shut and moved my head from side to side, trying my hardest to escape the start of that day, my last in Rhode Island.

Next to me, Duncan stirred, let out one of the tiny moans I'd grown used to, and I opened my eyes, just a bit. I lay flat on my back, staring up at the ceiling, my right arm curled behind my head, my left jutting out to my side. He was right there, snuggled against me, his head resting against my bare bicep, his sweaty forehead plastered to my cheek. He was still, very peacefully asleep.

I was crushed against the cool cement wall, trapped by his strong arms. My arm was beginning to cramp, and his raspy breathing slipped through and tickled my pit. The temperature was rising outside -- it would be a day for shorts -- but I didn't mind the body heat just then. A thin, crisp white sheet barely separated us in the tiny extra-long twin bed and the light breeze from his noisy box fan brushed against my arm hairs.

We were like two jigsaw puzzle pieces that almost fit together. Some of the parts interlocked, but otherwise it wasn't a match. The overall shape looked wrong, the images didn't quite connect. The sleeping position was uncomfortable, impossible, but it was my favorite. I'd manipulated him into the position but now wished he'd roll over. I just couldn't bring myself to make him move.

I'd been up for the last hour, trapped exactly like that. This hurts me more than it hurts you, I thought. No. My father used to say that. This is the way it's got to be. It's over. I'm leaving. It's not you, it's --

His alarm suddenly switched on and the sounds of the latest pop hit flooded the room. At last, it was six o'clock.

He lifted his head off me with a start. Groggy, he rubbed his eyes and the back of his head with his palm, like a four-year-old suddenly waking, disoriented, from an afternoon nap. I squinted at him, trying to focus my bad eyes on his shape. He was a sleep-ravaged mess, his face shadowed by his dark stubble, his eyes barely open slits, caked with goop. His black hair was cropped short, in hopeful preparation for summer, but no matter the cut, it always seemed perfect to me, even in moments like those: slick with sleep sweat, stuck up, unstyled.

Duncan reached over and slapped the Snooze bar. "Morning, sunshine," he growled. He ran his fingers through my mop of messy hair and smiled. "What you looking at?"

"You."

"You've got a bed-head fetish, huh? I learn something new everyday."

"I have a thing for morning breath, too. You better watch out."

He kissed me, both our lips tightly closed so that none of the toxic gas could escape.

"It's so early," he whined and hopped out of bed and pulled a pair of rumpled white boxers up his long legs and over his tight, furry ass. Somehow lanky and muscular, his body was like a snapshot of his soul, oozing both masculinity and sensitivity, a paradox, an affront, not to God or Nature, but to society. He stretched his arms towards the sky, yawning loudly, then scratched his chest.

"You staying here while I'm at lifting?"

"That OK?"

"What do you think?"

He searched the room for something, eyeing corners, looking under my backpack, looking through piles of clothes, until he found it -- a dirty t-shirt he had worn for the past week of workouts. He smelled like a one-man locker room.

"You're not going to shower before you go?"

"Or when I get back," he grinned, grabbing a baseball cap from the bedpost and throwing it on.

"You're gross."

He reached across me to open the window a little more, but really, it was an excuse to shove his armpit in my face. I protested and tried to push him away, but it egged him on. Next thing I knew, I was in a headlock, and then suddenly I was in a tight bear hug. I didn't bother to fight back this time.

"You love it," he said. And part of me did.

He leaned in and kissed me good-bye. "Be here when I get back." Then he was gone, leaving me alone in his room.

He really had no idea.