And then Pete is rounding the counter, chuckling slightly as he closes the distance between them with all the easy confidence Ben’s never seen him summon on camera, seemingly not nervous at all. He steps into Ben’s space with grace and ease, crowding him back against the counter just enough to force Ben to look up at him, breath caught in his throat, as Pete says, “I’m not trying to have a conversation about the joys of recipe development, Ben, no.”
Ben should wait for Pete to kiss him, give himself some scrap of plausible deniability, not to mention dignity; he does not. His self-control gives way all in one go—in spite of weeks of telling himself he had it all under control, it snaps like a twig the very instant Ben’s certain this whole thing hasn’t been in his head. He grabs Pete by the worn straps of his tank top and pulls him down into the kiss, letting go of one strap to slide a hand up Pete’s neck, into his hair, when Pete snakes an arm around his back and pulls him close.
“My good man!” Ben’s conscience screams, as though briefly surfacing from the ever-churning sea of anxiety that is Ben’s internal landscape. “Wait a moment, please! We can talk about this! A nice breath of fresh air, that’s what you… Oh. Oh, well, I must say, thisisquite a good kiss, isn’t it?Of course my objections stand, but he does seem to know what he’s—wait, is that hishandagainst your thigh or—do you know what? You seem to be handling this without me anyway, so. No hard feelings! See you for our guilt trip later, already got it scheduled, looking forward, bye!”
Ben forgets very quickly about his conscience, and then about ever having even had one. He forgets about Chris, and about the party downstairs, and his dreaded early bird flight toMichigan in a few short hours. He forgets about the videos, andLate Night with Brian O’Malley, and Pete’s horrible, unlucky history with the internet. Who, he thinks, when he can think at all, could remember anything right now? This is a time for recording the present, not sifting around in the past, and for the moment Ben lets everything go but the here and now.
He kisses Pete like he’s wanted to kiss Pete for weeks: hungrily, and intensely, and possessively, with an amount of himself in it that would usually scare him. It doesn’t scare him. Pete’s kissing him back too thoroughly and too well for Ben to access that brand of terror right now.
Ben had assumed, based on Pete’s personality, his daily struggles to find items like his keys, wallet, or phone, and essentially everything else about him, that he might be a bit unfocused in this arena, easily distracted or hard to follow. After all, anyone that hot wouldn’t have to try very hard, not if they didn’t want to. God knows Ben, in his various imaginings of things, had not minded the thought of having to direct Pete a little. It wasn’t exactly his usual vibe, but for Pete, and Pete’s body and hands and face, and the way Pete wears a pair of jeans—well. Ben would have been more than happy to cover any gaps.
But to his surprise and pleasure, Pete focuses on Ben the way he’s able to focus on a complicated culinary process, at least if no camera is rolling. He’s not scattered and in need of direction; he kisses Ben meticulously, with an attention to detail that steals Ben’s breath from his chest. His hands are everywhere—stroking Ben’s neck, sliding up the back of his shirt—and then both dropping low, fingertips sinking into the soft flesh of Ben’s thighs through the thin fabric of his suit trousers. He lifts Ben as though he weighs nothing, as though he’s a side of beef or a Christmas ham, and deposits him gently on top of the counter,all while kissing him.
“God,” Ben gasps, half laughing, when Pete pulls away to press a kiss against his jawbone, “we’re going to have to re-sanitize all the surfaces?—”
“To be honest,” Pete breathes, low and hot in Ben’s ear, “I wouldn’t say I’m concerned about that right now.” And then they don’t talk anymore.
TWELVE
A few hours later, as though it was all some kind of wild fever dream, Ben finds himself wandering dopily around JFK, smiling at every Hudson News as though it’s a wonder of the world. He feels…different, inside his skin. Like his glorious hour and a half with Pete pulled his soul out of his body, gave it a good shake, laundered it, darned up the holes, and slipped it back into place, just in time for the afterglow to be cut short by the insistent ringing of Ben’s “LEAVE FOR THE AIRPORT NOW, YOU IDIOT” alarm.
Pete had been good about that, though. Pete had been good about everything.
Pete had been…good. Ben can’t quite stop thinking about justhowgood he’d been, how skillful and attentive, how playful, howresponsive. Some of the sounds he’d made?—
—no, Ben cannotthinkabout this here, in the migraine-inducing fluorescent lighting of JFK’s underwhelming halls. This is a place for waiting for an airplane, boarding an airplane, or partaking in one of a variety of miserable side-quests that can occur between one and the other. It is not a place for remembering what Pete’s body had felt like against his, or under his hands, or the way he’d kissed Ben goodbye and whispered,“Fly out of LaGuardia next time, yeah? It’s closer to the office; you wouldn’t have to go just yet.”
Ben can see, now, that this would have been a great opportunity to say something like, “I think you’d better take me to dinner before you go dictating my airport choices,” or, indeed, “Will next time be before or after you break up with the hot guy who considers you a party ticket, your commitment to whom we have never otherwise discussed?” Instead, he had squeaked, “Next time?”
Pete had just grinned, and shaken his head, and kissed him again before sending him off, saying he’d take care of the various surfaces which needed re-sanitizing. It was a good kiss, one Ben is reliving in spite of his internal admonishments not to, when he hears, once again, from his conscience.
“It’s not that I don’t understand why you did it,” it begins, hesitant in the back of his mind. “But I wonder, I do, if you have considered the consequences. Considered them thoroughly, and all the way through to the end. If, for example, you were walking through the airport, and you happened toseeChris,walking directly towards you?—”
“Oh my God,” Ben breathes, stopping dead in his tracks and then, in a moment of true insanity, ducking behind a vending machine so as to remain unseen. He tries to tell himself it’s a waking nightmare, a hallucination born of guilt, but no:Chris himselfis indeed walking towards him. That’s bad enough on its own, but he appears to be with?—
—walking hand in hand, with, actually?—
—stopping to kiss another man, a man who isnotPete, right here in the middle of John F. Kennedy Airport. For anyone to see!
In this particular moment of Ben’s life, a variety of seemingly unrelated things are true. True: He has had several drinks over the course of the night, and is still, if he’s honest, a little less thansober. True: He has, for some weeks, been harboring a private well of rage for Chris for many reasons of his own, and to see him stepping out on Pete like this is simply a bridge too far. True: Bendoeshappen to know Pete isalsostepping out on Chris, extensively and with great enthusiasm, because Ben was there and ecstatic for the entire event, and it was only about an hour ago. And, true: Because of all of the above, the smart thing for Ben to do is put his head down, let them pass, and keep his big mouth shut.
But when someone blows your mind in the bedroom—or, as the facts run in this case, theGastronometest kitchen—it apparently takes out a few of yourcritical brain cells. Surely, it’s this, or perhaps a combination of this and his unwise second, post-coital Hot Dog Panic Attack that has Ben striding ferociously out of his hiding spot, stalking across the floor, and, when Chris has broken apart from his damningly not-Pete paramour, snapping, “Well, well, well. Aren’t you supposed to be in Weehawken?”
Chris stares at him, visibly confused. “No?What?”
“As if you don’t know what I’m talking about,” Ben says, crossing his arms over his chest. “What would yourboyfriendthink of you being here, huh? What about that?”
“Who evenareyou?” Chris demands, his brow creasing. “What would my boyfriend think? I’m with him! Right now! Behold!” He holds up their joined hands, as if in evidence, and adds, to him, “What do you think, babe? About me being here?”
“I think you better not be cheating on me with some guy in Weehawken,” the man says, but mildly enough. “But as far as I can tell, all your dad’s neighbors are ugly, so. I’m not that worried about it.”
“Thanks, baby,” Chris says, sounding touched. “Your trust means a lot.”
“So,” Ben splutters, a growing and embarrassing awareness that he’s maybe been projecting here starting to surface, “so—so ifthisis your boyfriend, then, you’re, what,usingPete? For freeticketsto things?”
Chris’s eyes bug for a second, and then his hand flies to his mouth and he says, “Oh my God, you’re theketchupguy. From the Halloween—Luke, remember I told you about the?—”
At this point, Chris’s Boyfriend—Ben’s going to go ahead and assume his name is Luke—cuts in. “Oh, you mean from the food?—”
