55. Jeremy

They had walked along the main strip downtown following the tour of the tea factory. Jeremy could have stayed for three more hours asking about tea, but even he could see that Davis’s attention was fading, so he suggested heading downtown. It wasn’t anything close to a true gayborhood, nothing that Jeremy had remembered from his days in Philadelphia or when he would go out in New York visiting his parents…before. Denver had a few gay bars, but it was nowhere close to the same.

It was nice, though, Jeremy thought, that he could walk down the street in front of all the hipster couples and older wealthy people drinking and hold his boyfriend’s hand. He could pull Davis close and press a kiss to his messy hair and enjoy the way he would blush and become a bit shy. But he would never press Davis to do more, would always check in before he pulled him into an alleyway and sucked his tongue and ran his hands up the stocky column of his neck and squeezed until Davis would whimper and beg Jeremy, please.

“Oh,” Davis said, pulling up in front of an Italian restaurant. “It’s been so long since I’ve had homemade Italian food.”

“Davis doesn’t exactly strike me as an Italian name.”

Davis rolled his eyes. “I’m some kind of mountain mongrel, and you know that.” He gave Jeremy that type of look that said he would be a bit of a brat when he got home, which was Jeremy’s favorite type of evening. Because they had been together enough to know that there was a dynamic, a way that one or the other could push and pull to get the other to capitulate in a really sexy way.

It was inexplicable, but they worked. The exhibit designer and the forest ranger.

Jeremy and Davis.

“My best friend growing up was only second-generation Italian,” he said, his eyes growing as big as saucers. “I would head over to his house when I needed something to distract me, and his mother would cook and cook and tell me I was too skinny, which,” he laughed, “was clearly never a problem for me, but I still took extra gnocchi.”

“I love Italian food, too,” Jeremy said, which was a better thing to say instead of I love you, Davis, which was a thought that had taken to banging around in Jeremy’s head a lot, even more than his thoughts about the utility of midcentury design. Which was saying something. “Do you want to get dinner?”

“Can we?”

When Davis turned his eyes on Jeremy, he felt as if he couldn’t say no to a puppy. He would give Davis everything in the world, if only he would ask. They were seated quickly at a table in the corner, one candlestick lit between them, and Jeremy had a flash of a similar dinner in the future. A dinner where he would ask Davis a question that would have a much more serious answer than if they wanted to split an appetizer.

“Drinks for you gentlemen?” the waitress asked, her hair sparkling silver and pink in the candles of the restaurant.

“Just a sparkling water for me,” Davis said.

Jeremy wanted a glass of wine, not for any reason to get drunk, but because he missed the taste of a Willamette Valley pinot with a marinara. His eyes bounced around the menu, from the wine portion to the food. He opened his mouth but hesitated.

Davis, who had such attention to detail he could see what looked like a speck moving against a cloud and be able to talk about specific bird migration patterns, caught his hesitation. “Babe,” he said, softly. “Jeremy, if you want a glass of wine, get a glass of wine.” A squeeze of his hand from Davis’s rough palm.

“Uh, yeah,” Jeremy said, clearing his throat. “A glass of the pinot noir, please.” He knew his cheeks were flushed before he even took a sip of the wine that hadn’t even been delivered to the table.

“Jeremy,” Davis said, still not having let go of his hand. “You’ve watched me be around people who were drinking for, well, weeks now.” Not that Jeremy knew exactly how many weeks and days they had been together. That would have been silly.

“Yeah, but…” Jeremy swallowed, now almost as red as the wine he had ordered. “Did you notice that I haven’t had a drink since we’ve been dating?”

“I guess I didn’t.”

Jeremy covered his face, which was liable to cause a forest fire at this point because it was so hot, said through his hands, “I was worried you wouldn’t kiss me if I tasted like alcohol.”

“I, uh…”

“And I won’t get drunk or anything, I just really love the taste of a good glass of pinot and they have my favorite here and—”

“I appreciate what you’ve been doing,” Davis said, seeming to pick his words carefully. “But I want you to enjoy what you like.” Jeremy checked one more time, just a nod, and smiled into his menu.