Page 61 of Puck You Both

The machine grinds, dumps, and goes quiet. The silence it leaves behind is louder than the hum was.

His bucket is full. Mine is full. No reason exists for either of us to still be standing here.

We're both still standing here.

His eyes come up to mine, game-day flat, giving me nothing, and underneath the nothing, something moving fast. This close, I can hear his breathing. It's not as even as his face.

My own pulse is behaving in ways I'd bench a rookie for.

The key card has been burning a hole in my pocket since my four p.m. inspection, room number written on the sleeve in hotel pen. I take it out and hold it between two fingers, in the narrow space between us.

Wall looks at it. Ice machine light, humming quiet. Then he looks at me, and his throat moves.

"Midnight," I say. "There's a chair."

His hand closes around the card. His brows pull together, and for once the question actually makes it out of him. "A… chair?"

"I plan." I pick up my bucket and walk.

Chapter 12

WALL

FREE WILL, MY ass.

People talk about wanting things like it's something you can steer. I'm taking hotel stairs at midnight with another man's key card in my pocket, and I can tell you, there's no wheel. There never was a wheel.

I didn't choose this.

Nobody chooses the thing that takes their whole understanding of self apart. I had a life that ran clean, with order in it. I had shit labeled. If wanting could be steered, I'd be asleep in my own bed right now. Instead, my mouth is too dry and my heart is too loud and I'm taking stairs two at a time, toward a room where two unknowns are waiting for me.

I'd never have picked this. And I've never wanted anything more. Both of those are true, and I've stopped trying to make them agree.

Between the fourth floor and the fifth I make myself slow down. Breathe. I’ve now spent weeks arguing with myself about it, calculating, pleading with my forehead against the shower tiles. And tonight, when it counts? Tonight, the argument’s gone.

At the top of the stairwell I stop with my hand on the door bar.

Last chance to be the man I was in September.

I push through. The hallway runs long and hushed, and his door is the fourth on the left. 512, in his handwriting, on a card I've been holding since the moment he handed it to me.

As I stop in front of the door, my thumb finds the edge of the card and I look at it for the millionth time.

I could just use it, and walk in like I belong.

But…do I?

That part is still unclear, so I lift my fist instead, and then stand there, motionless for a full minute, living out the last moment tonight that belongs only to me.

Then, I knock, and it belongs to all three of us.

THEO

PATRICK MOVES THE armchair again.

That's the third time, and I can't even enjoy it properly because I'm too busy vibrating.

He requested it. For Wall. My boyfr— The man I'm fucking ordered furniture so the man we want to fuck can sit in it and watch us. I don't know whether to tease him about it for a year or kiss him until he can't stand.