Passing Time Read online

  “Are you done insulting me?” The numb haze began to clear, and Louis assumed his body was his own again.

  “Yes. I’m done. Done with you. Say hi to Carter when you get back, although I don’t suppose I’ll get much of a mention, will I?” Jake spun round and stamped off into the hall. The front door wasn’t far away, and beyond that, the car. If Louis allowed Jake to drive away, the chances were he’d never see him again. He didn’t want that. Having Jake’s body pressed close to his on Mrs. Banks’ front path felt too good. He needed to experience that closeness again, if only for one last time.

  “He’s dead,” Louis called, loud enough Jake couldn’t fail to overhear.

  A moment later, Jake reappeared in the doorway. “What did you say?”

  Louis took a deep breath. Too late to stop talking now. “Carter. My absent boyfriend. He’s dead. The reason you catch me talking to myself is because I still talk to him as if he were with me. I talk to him because I need to. Because if I didn’t, I might as well not be here either. Which makes me more crazy than asshole, doesn’t it?”

  “I don’t know,” Jake whispered. “Does it?”

  “Judging by the way you’re looking at me, I’d say so.”

  “I’m sorry.” He stood rigidly in the doorway. “I don’t think you’re crazy.” He went on staring as if he expected something else to happen, like Louis to resume his discussion with his phantom lover. Louis did no such thing. He sat on the couch and stared right back, forcing Jake to break the silence. “So, how did…how did he die? I mean, was it…?”

  “AIDS?”

  “No!” After a pause, he added, “Was it?”

  “Your next question would be to ask if I’m positive, right?”

  “You mean, you’re…?” Jake pressed a hand to his mouth; his face drained of color. He looked like his legs were about to give out from under him.

  “I’m negative,” Louis said after several heartbeats of silence. “Carter didn’t die of AIDS. He had cancer. Ball cancer, if you want specifics. At least, that’s how it started.”

  Jake’s hand fell away from his mouth. “I’m sorry,” he said, with something like pity replacing the fear in his eyes.

  Louis snorted. “What have you got to be sorry about, besides making a beeline for a screwed-up, broken, borderline alcoholic? A guy who talks to thin air on a regular basis and listens to the air talking right back in his dead boyfriend’s voice.” Louis peeled the album in his lap open and stared at the photograph. A few moments later he felt Jake’s weight settle beside him.

  “Here.” Louis slid the album across. “That’s him.”

  Jake studied the photo and traced a fingertip around the line of Carter’s cheek. “He’s gorgeous.”

  Odd, Louis thought. Jake was a beauty too. Not as classically handsome as Carter perhaps, but a head turner all the same. He leaned over and brushed a rogue strand of fair hair from Jake’s face.

  “I found the lump one morning when we were fooling around,” he said, launching right in before he could change his mind. “Carter had been reluctant for me to touch him for a while. He knew I’d demand he go get himself checked. The doctor diagnosed an infection and gave him a course of antibiotics. A week later, he was in so much pain I drove him to the emergency room myself. He was admitted and had a biopsy the next day. I think we’d both already guessed what he had by then. Just didn’t want to admit the truth. Cart ended up having a ball removed. Given the choice, he’d rather have lost an arm. As it turned out, losing a ball was the least of our problems. The docs told us his cancer had spread to the lymph nodes in his stomach and lungs. He had surgery to remove the tumors, and following that, the chemo. And radiotherapy. He was sick all the time. He lost his hair, and looking in a mirror almost killed him. He made me get rid of every mirror in the house. Even the bathroom cabinet, which made it hell to shave.”

  Jake sat quietly, his gaze firmly fixed on Louis’s face. It made things somehow easier, to focus on those attentive blue eyes while Louis told Carter’s story.

  “I told him his hair would grow back. He knew what was to come. His mother had breast cancer, and his father’s began in his liver and spread. They had the medical profession fill them up with all the drugs and false hope available. But they got sicker and sicker with the treatment more than the disease itself. Carter wanted to live the life he had rather than postpone it in favor of one he may or may not get later on. Nothing I could do or say would change his mind.

  “I even threatened to leave him because I couldn’t bear the thought of watching him die, and you know what he said? He said he’d help me pack if I liked. I didn’t like. So I stayed. My father had died the year before and left me his auto-shop business. I sold up so we’d have the money to live a dozen lives in the year he had left. Exotic holidays, expensive cars, designer clothing…other men.” Louis paused. Carter had always had a penchant for beautiful young men. “Whatever he wanted, he got, and Carter wanted everything.”

  When he finished speaking, Jake stared at him for what felt like an hour. Eventually, Louis lowered his gaze.

  “I wish you’d told me this before,” he said, head bowed. “All those things I said just now, I didn’t mean them.”

  “I know.” Louis took back the album. He closed the book and set it on the floor.

  “I’m glad you’re telling me now.” Jake stroked the back of Louis’s hand with his palm. “You’ve done well to get through today the way you have.”

  “You mean sober?”

  Jake raised his eyes. “I mean, your mum would have been proud.”

  “Don’t patronize me.” Louis shifted his hand. “I’m not cracking up. Carter’s been with me since the day he died. He may only exist in my head now, but that doesn’t make him any less real to me.”

  “Whatever gets you through the day,” Jake said softly.

  “It’s been two years.”

  “Like I said, whatever gets you through.” He smiled a thin, sad smile. Almost pitying. Not the first time Louis had been on the receiving end of such a smile.

  “Does nothing faze you?” Louis stared into the clear blue of Jake’s eyes. “I’ve just told you I’m a madman, and you’re still sitting here. I don’t get it.”

  “I thought you had a long-term boyfriend you were cheating on with me. That fazed me pretty badly in case you hadn’t noticed. I always knew there was something more to you, some dark secret. I didn’t think you cared about me enough to tell me. But you do, and I’m smiling because you trust me. I don’t know which one of us is crazier, but right now that doesn’t really matter, does it?”

  Louis took his hand. He might trust Jake right now, but he didn’t trust himself to answer. So they sat in silence holding hands and listening to the vague tick of his mother’s carriage clock on the mantelpiece.

  “Louis? I hate to land you with this now, but you know I’m leaving tomorrow, right?”

  Louis frowned. “Leaving?”

  “Yeah. Most of my friends are already back in Kent, but I couldn’t let you go to the funeral alone.”

  The funeral. The word sounded so detached from this house; this neat tidy little terrace could have belonged to anyone, because virtually nothing here reminded him of how things once were. “I hadn’t thought. I suppose I forgot about the time. You should be home, packing. Not stuck here with me in this rabbit hutch listening to my sob story.”

  “It’s not a sob story. It’s your story. Yours and Carter’s. Telling me about him couldn’t have been easy, but I’m glad you did.” Jake slipped an arm around his shoulder.

  “I feel like I’m lost.” Louis pressed his cheek to Jake’s chest. Jake’s heartbeat throbbed a solid rhythm beneath his ear. “Nothing’s how I thought it was.” He let out a sob, and Jake’s arms were suddenly tight around him, cradling him like a child. It felt good. Safe.

  “You should go home,” Louis said as Jake stroked a gentle hand through his hair. This was as much a delusion as his chats with Carter. He wasn’t s
afe in Jake’s arms. In a few hours’ time, Jake’s arms wouldn’t even exist. Not in Louis’s world. Louis’s world wasn’t safe at all.

  “I’m spending the night with you.”

  Louis pulled back to look Jake in the eye. “You sure?”

  Jake nodded. “We need to say good-bye properly. No way are you sleeping alone tonight.” He tightened his grip on Louis’s hair, then whispered, “I don’t want you sleeping alone ever again.” Louis pressed his cheek to Jake’s chest and made like he hadn’t heard.

  Chapter Eight

  “Coffee?” Louis asked the moment they arrived back at the apartment. His body yearned for something stronger, but he couldn’t guarantee he’d stop at one glass. Besides, he wanted to spend this last evening with Jake, not a bottle of Jim Beam. So coffee it was. He set the photo album on the empty bookcase. As for the rest of his mother’s things, he had no interest in them. He’d already made up his mind to call in the clearance guys and put the house on the market. His mother was dead, and one day he’d grieve, but not tonight.

  “No, not for me.” As Jake hung his suit jacket on the hook by the door, Louis studied the way the gray slacks pulled tight across Jake’s ass. He mulled over the idea of slipping to his knees and giving that ass a firm bite. Jake turned and caught Louis ogling, as he had done all those times at the bar.

  “Let’s go to bed,” Jake said, then bit his lip. “That’s if you want to.” Louis closed the gap between them and reached around Jake’s hips to clasp those firm butt cheeks in his palms.

  “I’ve missed you,” Jake said. “We’ve wasted a whole week being distant when—”

  Louis moved a finger over his moving lips to still them. He loosened Jake’s tie, eased it over his head, and tossed it away. Once he’d undone the buttons to Jake’s shirt, he slipped the shirt off his shoulders and ran his fingers over Jake’s broad biceps. His tan had faded, but when did he get time to sun himself? Late September. Almost autumn, and all their time had gone.

  Jake basked beneath Louis’s attention before leaning in for a kiss. He pulled Louis’s jacket down over his arms and began to guide him backward toward the bedroom with his lips. The move from lounge to bedroom was surprisingly fast. When the backs of Louis’s knees unexpectedly hit the end of the bed, he toppled onto the mattress, holding tight to Jake so they went down together, barely breaking their kiss. Jake’s hot tongue probed his mouth, and he felt the solid ridge of Jake’s cock pressing against his thigh. Jake broke the kiss to pull at Louis’s shirt, popping buttons into the air before yanking on Louis’s fly to shove his hand inside.

  “I’ve wanted you all week,” Jake murmured as his fingers closed around Louis’s cock. “I couldn’t get my head around you not wanting me.”

  Not wanting him? That had never been the case. “You’ve got me now.” Louis reached up to stroke Jake’s cheek, a fine trace of stubble prickling beneath his palm. “You’ve got me all night.”

  “Do I really? Is it me you want? Or is it just this?” He gave Louis’s cock a tug and a squeeze, which sent starbursts of pleasure cascading his brain, rendering him dumb for a moment. “Could I be anyone? Anybody?”

  Anybody? Such as a whore? In the past there had never been anybody for him but Carter. He’d never expected to feel anything for another man. Especially not someone like Jake. So young, so optimistic. Carter had so many facets to his personality, their relationship never had the chance to grow stale. Yet by contrast, Jake was so open and transparent, when Louis gazed up into his eyes, only love and complete trust reflected back. In the morning all this would be gone. One day perhaps not so far into the future, Jake would gaze at another man this exact same way.

  No! No thinking of the future. The future didn’t exist. Right now he had Jake, and he had the rest of the night. They had to make the most of it. The next few hours would have to last him a lifetime.

  He closed his hand over Jake’s wrist. “You’re not just anybody to me,” he said, his voice a husky whisper. “It’s you I need. No one else.”

  Jake smiled down at him. “That is the right answer,” he said. “I’m all yours.”

  Too right you are.

  Guiding Jake to his usual position, on his back, Louis quickly divested him of his shoes, trousers, socks, and underpants.

  He kissed a path down Jake’s chest and belly, moving lower to touch his lips to the tip of Jake’s cock. He tickled Jake’s thighs with his free hand and brought two fingers to his mouth, sucking on them until they were nice and slick with saliva. These he pressed to Jake’s asshole, applying just enough pressure that the tips eased inside. Louis took Jake’s cock into his mouth, and a dribble of bittersweet precum oozed over his tongue. He inched his fingers deeper into Jake’s dark channel, drawing them back against the tugging sensation of inner muscles, curling the tips to seek Jake’s prostate, feeling for the firm, rubbery gland.

  Jake let out a sudden yelp and yanked on Louis’s hair, making the roots scream. Bingo, Louis thought, ignoring his shrieking roots to slide his fingertip across the gland again. Jake cried out for a second time and rammed his hips at Louis’s face. Louis gagged, tasting the watery saltiness of Jake’s precum mixed with his own saliva and bile as he struggled to withdraw. Jake relaxed his grip, and his glistening shaft emerged from Louis’s mouth. Louis pulled his fingers from Jake’s ass, trying to recover his breath.

  “Louis,” he said, and when Louis raised his gaze, Jake’s eyes were hazy with thwarted lust.

  “What?” He paused to catch his breath. “I’m not here just for the pleasure of sucking you off.”

  “Not…funny.” Jake slid a hand down his body and wrapped his fingers around his stiff shaft. The other hand he closed around his ball sac, gripping tight enough to make himself shudder. Louis kept his eyes trained on the sight of Jake jerking off as he flung off the rest of his clothing and reached for a condom in the bedside table drawer. His hand flailed and came up empty. A shiver of panic coursed through him before his fingers found what they were searching for. One left and barely a squeeze of lube.

  “Shit!”

  Jake paused in his ministrations. “What?”

  “Last one.” Louis flashed him the condom packet before ripping into it with his teeth.

  “Oh yeah. I was going to get some, but we had that stupid disagreement. If you like, I’ll go—” He made to sit up, but Louis pushed a palm to the center of his chest, keeping him flat on his back.

  “Not now, you won’t.”

  “Well, I wasn’t planning on right now.” Jake grinned, already relaxing again beneath Louis’s palm.

  Louis sheathed his cock and slicked himself with the remnants of the lube. There was only a fingertip’s width with which to coat Jake’s ass. Jake liked plenty of lubrication; he liked to be slathered, which explained why they’d run out so soon.

  Louis moved into position, and Jake raised his knees to his chest. He did that each time they had sex now, without question, and he no longer gritted his teeth and tensed for pain. Louis entered him swiftly. Jake responded with a flicker of a flinch and a subdued whimper in the back of his throat.

  “Too much?” Louis peered through Jake’s knees. When Jake shuddered beneath him, a lick of pleasure quivered in Louis’s balls.

  “No.” Jake flashed an unsteady smile. “It’s good. Except…don’t…don’t let me come too soon, okay?”

  Louis thought about making that same request himself but settled for saying, “I’ll do my best,” instead. He gripped the undersides of Jake’s thighs, the firm flesh instantly warming his palms. He withdrew slightly, exposing his shaft to a swirl of cool air, and slid his hand down to Jake’s knees. Louis lifted them over his shoulders before plunging into the fiery depths of Jake’s body.

  Jake moaned and squirmed, his cock rigid against his belly. Louis wrapped a fist around Jake’s shaft. Almost immediately, a thin thread of precum seeped from the head and dribbled down to pool on his fist. Too close. He released his grip and moved both hands beneath
Jake’s rump to hold him in position. Louis drove deep into the moist heat, and fresh sparks of pleasure surged along his already aching shaft. Jake panted out a rapid rhythm to Louis’s thrusts. He threw his arms above his head. His chest rose in a magnificent arc, his nipples tight little peaks ripe as fresh strawberries.

  With Jake’s knees locked over his biceps, Louis dipped down to pluck a nipple into his mouth. He licked and nibbled, wetting the nub to a glistening sheen before shifting position to lavish the other nipple with similar attention.

  Jake’s fingers pushed through Louis’s hair. Louis rolled his hips, savoring the sensation of his balls kissing the velvet warmth of Jake’s backside.