He slammed his fist on his hips, “That’s what you are more worried about in this moment? How your best friend let himself into your unit? You are unbelievable!” Waving his hand in the air, as he turned around and stormed off, hearing him stomp down the stairs. I quickly jumped out of bed with a grunt, threw on my underwear, and ran after him, leaving my honey behind, safe in bed.
I caught up to him in the kitchen right before his hand hit the door knob, “David, would you wait so we can talk? You asked questions, don’t you want the answers?” I placed my hand on his shoulder to keep him from leaving. I also wanted to make sure he wasn’t going to go telling the wrong people about Charlie and I’s illegal activities. I didn’t care about me per say, I was more worried about Charlie. He had already been run off once from his home. That happening again would completely break him.
David whipped around to face me, fury on his face, tone dangerous, “What could you possibly say to me that I couldn’t already unsee? Huh? You were wrapped around another man, NAKED! To think, I have been best friends with someone that is like– that, but also that said best friend didn’t even think to tell me.” As he kept talking angrily, his tone cooled by the end to sadness, giving away his real feelings. “Why didn’t you tell me? Was it because I used that word that you asked me not to? Which, now I understand why. And with that kid!”
“Don’t!” I cut him off, eye contact serious as a nun at a catholic school. “You can be angry at me, you can be hurt that I didn’t tell you, but do not include Charlie in it. And do not insult him!” I took a couple pulls of air into my straining lungs before calmly saying, “I would like to sit down and tell you everything you are asking and more.” I gestured to the little table. David looked at it like the items also insulted him.
“David,” the soft voice came from behind me. I whipped around to find Charlie standing there, dressed in pajamas. “Will you please have a seat? I’ll make coffee.”
“Honey… Charlie. You don’t have to be invol–” trying to keep him away from the situation, wanting to protect him from the judgement and negative emotions.
“Involved? I am involved,” Charlie cut in. “So, I am going to be a part of this conversion. David has questions, so we are here to answer them.Together.”
Charlie’s voice was quiet and calm, but I could still see the uneasiness he was trying to hide while being the bravest he could be. He could be a mixed bag, like most young men, but the growth he had shown in the short amount of time I’ve known him makes me proud to call him mine.
I nodded at him and turned back to David. “You heard him. He is going to make coffee, which I know is hard for you to turn down.”
“This is not the time for jokes, Jim,” plopping down in a chair, his big frame making it scratch against the floor. The way he hit it, I was surprised the legs didn’t bend from the size and weight of his body.
Charlie brushed my back with his hand as he passed to get to the stove and coffee kettle. “How do you like your coffee, David?” I was impressed Charlie's voice didn’t show how skittish he actually was. He was really trying to help calm the situation. I didn’t think he would have been able to pull this off a week ago. He would have jumped out the window to escape instead of using the door.
“Black, like this situation,” David deadpanned.
“Uncalled for,” I retorted with a bark, completely over his attitude. I turned and whispered to Charlie, “Will you be okay for a minute while I go and put on some clothes, so we are not having this conversation with me in my jockeys?” Charlie nodded, not saying a word. I looked at David to tell him I’d be right back, with a look that I hope told him,I will beat your ass if you upset Charlie.
Once clothed in my own pajamas, I rushed back to the kitchen. It gave me the time to collect my thoughts, calmer now as I sat down with David. The silence was worse than no one saying a word in the lift that goes down into the mine. We sat like that until Charlie set cups in front of us, saying “David, would you like us to tell you everything or do you want to ask questions and hear the answers?”
I looked up at Charlie, holding his own cut of coffee, but his attention was on David. David was looking down into his coffee like he was trying to read tea leaves in a teacup, telling him what to do. He finally took a gulp of his steaming coffee, looked at Charlie and said, “Just talk. I don’t even know where to begin, myself,” he sounded not only hurt but his eyes said he was scared, baffling me.
I felt like it should come from me since he was my best friend, so I told him about us, how it started, and obviously why no one knows. Plus, it happened so fast, which he pointed out. I said, “A wise and loud woman once told me,‘Love doesn’t work on a time frame, that’s why they call it love at first sight,’” shrugging my shoulders.
“But you were so annoyed with him when we first met them,” David stated, pointing his thumb in Charlie’s direction, making me grimace a little, because that wasn’t a good look for me.
I placed my hand on Charlie’s arm when he gave me a pained glance, before answering David, “I was annoyed, yes. But I don’t think I was annoyed with him. I was annoyed with getting split up from you, definitely. Mostly…,” pausing to look up at Charlie next to me and his beautiful eyes, trying to imagine the dimple that’s hidden at the moment. “Mostly, I was annoyed with myself for noticing him, for making me try to build walls up around those thoughts.” Charlie’s smile peeked out, his face relaxing, showing me the care and adoration he also felt for me, “But he took away the bricks before I got very far.”
David looked between the two of us. “How long have you been– you know? Or was this the first time?” He looked back at Charlie, before closing his eyes, like the image from upstairs resurfaced and he didn’t want to see it.
“I have been into men ever since I could remember, and no, this wasn’t a first,” He blasted his eyes open, mouth starting to move, but I held up my hand. “I need you to understand why I didn’t tell you. You know it’s illegal. We are illegal, just by existing. We have to keep this close to the chest.”
I paused for a moment, knowing that this may upset him more. I took a big breath, looking into Charlie’s sapphire eyes. He nodded at me, hopefully in response to what I really wanted to ask him before I broached the topic. “We both have had very bad experiences, David. People have found out or have known about the both of us in the past. I have no association with my family because they couldn’t accept it in the end. Charlie and his father were run out of town, which is why they are here, but not before Charlie was beaten by a group of boys in school. Can you try to understand the danger we are constantly in? The fear we feel of what people close to us will do based on past experiences we have already dealt with? The safest outcome would be to shut the door on this and lock it. Never let what this is shown to the other side.”
David looked up at Charlie with rage, but I didn’t know what for, blowing air out of his nose like the bull that woke us, that I didn’t want to startle upstairs earlier. “Did that really happen to you,” he asked Charlie. When he nodded silently, glancing down at his bare feet, the memory of the shame and fear hedescribed coming back, I took his hand in mine, not giving a shit what David thought. “I’m sorry that happened to you, Charlie. You didn’t deserve that.”
He looked back at me, glancing at our hands connected before he continued, “And I understand where you are coming from. I can’t imagine everything you both have gone through, but–” He shook his head, his anger bleeding out of him, with sorrow replacing it.
“David. It wasn’t about intentionally keepingyouin the dark. I wouldn’t have told anyone else either, if they were my best friend,” I reached over the table and placed my hand on his forearm, right below the elbow. He looked at where my hand was touching him in question, like it now burned unlike it did before this morning. I pulled back slowly. He looked up at me, with a question I could read and answered before he could ask, “Oh, God. No. I never saw you like that.”
David’s mouth dropped, and his palm slapped the table with a crack. “Well, that’s fucking insulting!”
Both Charlie and I laughed in surprise, not expecting that answer. I welcomed the break in the gloom that had filled my kitchen. My chest was starting to hurt from the hostility. I calmed down and took a breath, giving a small smile to Charlie. But David continued to gaff, “How could you not, my body is amazing and my dick is big!”
“Oh, I know,” Charlie replied, shaking his head, blushing a little.
“Hold on! How do you know,” swinging my head to and fro from Charlie and back to David in amusement.
“The hospital. We had to shower after we arrived with you. I teased him when he got a look at me, clearly in shock over seeing my swinging schlong,” David chuckled over the memory. “Now it allmakes sense,” and pumped his eyebrows up and down suggestively, making us laugh.
“It was the first time I had ever seen someone else naked,” Charlie answered exasperated, continuing to chuckle.
