Chapter 9

Joel was prettysure Dan had been on the verge of kissing him back there on the pier. It was good that he hadn't, because Joel would've had to stop him, which would've felt like chopping off his own face.

One couldn't be too careful in public. Baltimore wasn't Laramie, Wyoming, but it wasn't San Francisco, either. Even on a Saturday night when most of the crowd was young and hip, there could've been a drunken asshole who would loudly object to two men kissing, as Joel had experienced more than once. Even if such harassment didn't escalate to outright danger, it would've been a bucket of ice water thrown onto their otherwise perfect-ish evening together.

Dan craned his neck as Joel drove past the Inner Harbor on their way back to the hotel. "That looks cool."

"There's a kick-ass aquarium and science center, plus another market with great food. If you want, we could come back into the city tomorrow, after we go to the park for your photo shoot."

"Awesome." Dan turned to face forward, tapping his thumb against his leg in time to his new CD, Keane's Hopes and Fears.

Joel had to figure out an excuse to stay another night in Baltimore. Or maybe he didn't need an excuse. Sam would probably relish an extra night on his own. He liked his space, Sam did.

"Whoa, Camden Yards!"

Joel startled at Dan's sudden exclamation. "That's why I wanted to come this way instead of leaving the city through the tunnel. Figured you'd dig it."

"That place is legendary," Dan called out over the music. "It started the whole trend of gorgeous ballparks designed just for baseball." He turned in his seat to look back as they passed. "It's so retro. I'd love to see the inside."

"We could go to a game."

Somehow those words had flown from his mouth. When had Joel last tolerated sports for the sake of a guy? Not since college?

"Orioles are in Detroit right now. I heard the scores on my way here." He turned and smiled at Joel. "But thank you."

Luckily they'd just stopped at a traffic light, so Joel could absorb the sight of him for a moment.

"Love this one!" Dan turned up the volume on "Everybody's Changing," Keane's new single, a song Joel hadn't paid much attention to. Piano rock left him morose, so he avoided it when possible.

While waiting for the light to change, Joel looked to his left, out over the Inner Harbor.

Baltimore was often teamed with Washington, DC, where Joel now spent most of his nightlife. Their metro areas overlapped and combined, and they even had a jointly named airport, BWI. Yet while DC was a place of transients, with constant infusions of new cultural blood, Baltimore often felt stuck in time, pining so hard for its industrial glory days it couldn't look to the future for longer than a blink.

Still, it was home. He placed his hand against the window in a silent loving touch. Baltimore would never be too good for him.

They got on I-95 and drove back toward the hotel, the music too loud to talk over.

Where did they stand now regarding sex? Had they decided it was a bad idea? Or had they decided to turn it into a good idea? Or, safest of all, had they decided to decide later, when they had a more complete data set?

The occasional glance at Dan's face offered zero clues.

Back in their hotel's labyrinthine parking lot, Joel cruised up and down for a space near his side of the building. His body hummed with tension, every muscle braced for what was coming—if only he knew what that was.

A pair of white reverse lights glowed up ahead, on a car bearing bumper stickers that read Privateers Do It for the Booty and My Other Car is a 14-Gun Schooner.

Joel put on his blinker. As the other driver backed up, their car's taillights illuminated a grungy pickup truck with Wyoming plates parked in the row to Joel's left.

He tapped a finger against his window. "Look, another Wyominger—or Wyomingian? What do you call yourselves?"

"Wyomingite," Dan said.

"Wyomingite," Joel mouthed as he veered slowly into the open spot. This had better not be one of those times he muffed a straightforward parking job. Spatial awareness was not a strength on the best of days.

"That's actually…" Dan cleared his throat. "That's my truck."

"Your rental? Wild coincidence that they gave you one with Wyoming plates." He glanced at the truck in his rearview mirror. "Hope you got a good rate for that piece of shit."

"It's my piece of shit. The one I own."

Hang on.

Joel stomped on the brake pedal, barely in time to avoid the concrete parking block. "You drove here?"

"Yeah."

"You said you were flying back Tuesday." He shoved the gear shift into park. "Why did you lie to me?"

"I said I was going back Tuesday. I never mentioned a flight."

More like a technicality than the truth. "Are you afraid of flying? Why would your boss make you drive across two time zones for an assignment?"

"I'm not afraid of flying." Dan's seat-belt removal was as slow and careful as his speech. "There weren't any affordable flights by the time I decided to come. Holiday weekend and all."

"You…decided to come."

Dan let out a little sigh and hung his head. "Yeah," he said in a near whisper.

Joel turned off the car but didn't open the door. "Can you tell me about that decision?"

Dan cleared his throat again. "I was at my mom's house earlier this week. The plan was to stay through Memorial Day. Our town is off I-70, east of Denver, near the border with Kansas."

Photos carouseled through Joel's mind, from the hundred times he'd looked up eastern Colorado: the dusty cattle ranches, the rugged roads, the enormous, so-blue-it-hurtssky.

Dan didn't look at him as he ejected his CD and put it back in its case. "Thursday night, Mom and I were watching this nature documentary. It's one of the few things we can do together without having an argument. Anyhow, there was some show…I don't remember what about, but there were dragonflies, and it made me think of cicadas."

"Totally different order—Odonata versus Hemiptera—but go on."

"And I thought of you. And I-I couldn't stop thinking about you." Dan clutched the CD case with both hands, rubbing his thumbs over the title words. "So before I went to sleep I Googled you and saw you were speaking at this CicadaCon thing in two days."

"Oh." Joel undid his own seat belt but clung onto the latch plate. "Then what?"

"Then I looked for flights. The only one available had three stops and cost eleven hundred dollars."

"Ouch."

"But I looked at a map and saw that the town you were speaking in was right off I-70." He turned toward Joel but didn't lift his head. "It seemed like a sign, that I could take one single road straight across America to get to you."

Joel's heart started slam dancing against his ribs. "Hooray for the interstate highway system." His breath trembled in his throat. "Thanks, Eisenhower."

Dan didn't laugh at his feeble attempt to shatter the tension. "So I woke up early Friday morning and started driving east." Finally he raised his eyes to meet Joel's. "I've been wanting to do that forever."

Joel was out of jokes. "How long?" he whispered.

"For about seventeen years."

"No, I mean, how long was the drive?"

"Um…" Dan ran a hand through his hair and scratched the back of his head. "Not counting breaks, about twenty-four hours."

Joel let go of the latch plate, his hands too shaky to hold onto anything. "You're telling me…" He turned to Dan, leaning forward to dig out the full truth. "You're saying you dropped everything and drove two thousand miles across the country?—"

"More like fifteen hundred miles."

"—just to see me?"

"Is that bad? I don't want you to feel?—"

Joel kissed him. In one instant, all the questions, all the doubts, melted into a molten stream of want. There was only now and here and them.

Dan made a muffled noise that morphed into a moan, like the one he'd given after his first spoonful of affogato. He kissed back with a fervor that curled Joel's toes.

Oh hell yes, this was right. Nothing had ever felt righter.

If only he could crawl over the gear shift and put every inch of himself close to every inch of Dan. It was utter bullshit that they couldn't instantly transport themselves into his hotel bed.

Finally he pulled back and forced his hands out of Dan's hair—the place he'd been dying to bury them all day. "My room?"

"Yep."

Joel leaped out of the car and started for the hotel. Halfway up the sidewalk he stopped. Dan had disappeared. "Dude?"

"Just getting my stuff." There came the creak of a car door, then a slam. "You're letting me stay over, right?"

"Of course. I just thought?—"

"It'd be more romantic if we didn't stop for anything?"

"Yeah, but that's silly. Let me get my stuff too." He patted his pockets. His keys were still in the ignition, but he hadn't locked them in, small mercies.

Dan appeared as Joel was opening his trunk. "Besides, I have things in here we may need."

"Things?"

"You know," Dan said in a low voice. "Condoms?"

"Oh!"

Dan put his hands up. "Not assuming anything. I thought, just in case."

"Right. Good thought." Potentially a great thought. Joel grabbed for his overnight bag and missed the strap. He reached again, focusing on his hand opening and closing, and this time managed to pick up his bag. Yeesh, he was totally sober yet still losing control of his extremities.

"Joel."

"Yeah?"

The world capsized as he was pulled into Dan's arms, and that soft, delicious mouth was on his again, and now their bodies were, well, not aligned exactly, given their difference in height, but very much against each other, offering a preview of what was to come.

Before long, Joel's neck muscles cried out for relief, so he broke off the kiss. "Somehow we're not any closer to my bed."

"Maybe not geographically, but in every other way…" Dan grazed his lips over Joel's, parting them with a wisp of tongue. "We're getting there."

By the timethey arrived at Joel's room, Dan's heart was racing from more than lust. He didn't know the first thing about sex with a man. Well, he knew the first thing. Maybe even the tenth thing. How many things were there to know? Forty-five? Fifty? A lot of unknown unknowns.

They went inside, and Joel flicked on the light in the room's foyer. The ceiling bulb flashed on with a tzzzt!, then went out.

"Stay here," Joel said. "No point in us both trampling through the dark."

The door thudded shut behind Dan. They were alone now. Really, truly alone, with no one to see them or interrupt them.

Which was fine. He was an adult. Joel was an adult. They were two adults.

So why did he feel like an awkward teenager?

Joel switched on the bedside lamp, but Dan stayed where he was, heels pressed against the door.

"You okay?" Joel came to the foot of the bed. "Are you having second thoughts?"

"Um." He hugged his camera case. "I think I'm up to third thoughts."

"What kind of thoughts?"

"They're not exactly words. More like a staticky screaming inside my head." Oof, that sentence had taken a lot of oxygen.

"How does that usually translate into English for you?"

"Something like"—another gulp of air—"I'm really nervous but also excited."

Joel smiled. "Me, too."

"I just don't want to…"

The smile vanished. "What? Don't want to what?"

"Disappoint you."

Joel's eyes went soft. "Why would you think you could ever disappoint me?"

"Because I've never, uh, most stuff, with a guy. I mean, I've done a few things. But not with anyone I—" Was it okay to admit this? "Anyone whose name I remember. Or, like, knew in the first place."

"Not with the gay friends you mentioned?"

He coughed out a laugh. "Definitely not. I want to keep them as friends."

"Don't you care whether you keep me as a friend?"

"That's the thing. I do care. I care about you."

Joel's brows pitched together, all his coyness gone. "Dan, do you want me?"

"God, yes. That's the one thing I'm sure of." He set down his bags and took a small step forward. "That's also the one thing I'm afraid of."

"I think I get it now." Joel nodded at the bags. "Do you have the Yo La Tengo CD you bought?"

"In my camera case."

"Let's play it." Joel picked up his own duffel and took it to the desk, offering some much-needed breathing room.

Dan found Summer Sun in its bag from the record shop. Miraculously, the shrink wrap came off easy. He stuffed the wrap into the trash can, then went to the CD player on the nightstand.

The nightstand beside the bed. The bed where they would soon?—

One thing at a time. He slipped the CD into the player.

A soft, dreamy synthesizer, with sultry notes that meandered into his blood and let him pull in a deep, pulse-slowing breath. Then murmuring vocals, weaving words he couldn't understand, but didn't need to.

Finally, a gentle touch on his back.

Joel took his hand, his palm warm and steady, and led him to the foot of the bed, where he slipped an arm around Dan's waist. "Dance with me."

Yes. Again. Like in the meadow.

He laid his arm on Joel's shoulder, careful not to lean on him, no matter how much he needed to. "I still don't know how to waltz."

"No waltzes on this album, though eventually there is a mambo." Joel pressed his cheek to Dan's collarbone, his breath caressing the hollow of his throat as he spoke. "These tunes are made for lazy swaying under the summer sun. Hence the album title."

Dan closed his eyes and inhaled the scent of Joel's hair, a mixture of coconut shampoo, the waterfront salt air, and him. "I'm picturing us at a beach party. The kind with a bonfire and loads of beer."

"Mmm." Joel nuzzled his neck. "Tell me more."

"Someone's playing an acoustic guitar, but we can still hear the waves crashing in. We're dancing like this, barefoot on the sand, just outside the firelight where no one can see us."

"Can't we be dancing where everyone can see us, but no one cares?"

He brushed his lips over Joel's forehead. "Maybe in seventeen years."

The first song ended, but the second was just as dreamy, with a faster rhythm. They swayed in half time to the song's tempo. Dan angled his head to read Joel's expression, but that swoop of silken hair hid all but his long, dark lashes and the tip of his nose.

He brought Joel's hand to his lips. At last Joel looked up, eyes wide yet unreadable. Dan kissed him, as softly as he could stand. Had it been only minutes since their mouths had last met? It felt more like hours.

His fingers grazed the nape of Joel's neck. So warm and soft—and apparently sensitive, because Joel sighed and moved closer, pressing their clasped hands between them.

"If you want," Joel whispered against his mouth, "we can just keep dancing and kissing. We've got all weekend."

All weekend, and a long one at that. But only one weekend.

"No hurry, no pressure," Joel continued. "I'm up for however much—or however little—you want."

Dan unfolded his hand to touch Joel's chest. A strong, fierce heart pounded there. What would it take to make that heart race as much as his own?

Only one way to find out.

He tugged Joel's hair to tilt his head back, then dragged his lips over Joel's neck. The skin there was smooth in some places, stubbly in others, and tasted like salty heaven.

Joel moaned, his fingers curling tighter against Dan's lower back.

Their steps lost rhythm, no longer matching the beat. The music was barely audible now over the rasp of Joel's breath and the wub-wub-wub-wub-wub of blood in Dan's ears.

Joel's fingers brushed the hollow of his back, this time beneath his shirt. Dan gasped.

"Is that okay?" Joel asked.

More than okay. So, so, so much more than okay. "It's perfect."

"Perfect implies it can't get any better. But I bet it can."

Definitely a winning bet. "Prove it."

"You want me to tell you or show you?"

He pretended to think. "Tell, then show."

"Ooh. Well, first I'm going to take off your shirt." He pushed it up slowly, the heels of his hands sliding over Dan's chest.

Dan raised his arms to help the shirt leave his body. The air in the room was cool, but Joel's gaze was fire.

Joel planted a single kiss over his heart. "Now I'm going to let you take off mine."

He unbuttoned Joel's shirt, starting at the top. The lower he got, the more he fumbled. On the bottom button, his knuckles grazed the front of Joel's khakis, provoking a soft gasp that almost brought Dan to his knees.

With just his fingertips, he slid the shirt off Joel's shoulders until it fell to the floor.

Joel swallowed hard. "So then I'm gonna…" He ran his palms up and over Dan's chest and shoulders. "Fuck it, words are hard. Just kiss me."

He did, pulling Joel close and mapping the bones and muscles of his back, enshrining every bare inch in memory.

At long last, this wasn't enough. He turned their bodies and took one step forward, then another, with Joel stepping back like in a real dance, until they were stopped by the bed. One more inch forward, and they tumbled down together.

This was real. Him on top. Joel's thighs clasping his hips. Joel's hands clutching his back. And their…everything pressing together with the force of gravity and the urgency of need.

They fit. God, how they fit, despite their bodies' differences. They fit like complementary colors, each making the other gleam brighter.

Out of pure instinct, he slid against Joel, down where their connection sparked fiercest.

Whoa. Mistake. How did he get so close to the brink so fast? That hadn't been an issue in, what, ten years?

If he pulled away, Joel might think he was freaking out. But if he didn't pull away, things would get sticky mighty quick.

Slow down. Clear head.

He rolled onto his side, putting a few face-saving inches between their crotches.

"You okay?" Joel asked. "Not still worried about disappointing me, are you? Because you could never."

"It's not that." Well, not only that. "I just want to touch you, find out what you like." He surfed his fingertips up Joel's collarbone, his blood already calming. "Hard to do that when I'm lying on top of you."

Joel's smile was even more radiant at point-blank range. He stretched his arms above his head. "Go for it."