What’s the matter?

By the time I caught my breath, Rio was laughing quietly to himself, still holding my hands as he watched me in his half-shy, half-knowing way. “What’s the matter?” he teased. “Never kissed a boy before?”

I licked my lips, tasting the memory he’d left behind. “A couple times, just to try… but it was never like that.”

His eyes lit up at the compliment, and he leaned forward, whispering against my cheek. “You like me that much?”

“Maybe.” I closed my eyes again, letting myself nuzzle back and slip my hands around his waist.

One More Game

This game was harder, between the pressure of having come so close, and the nagging feeling of Rio watching my every move. It felt like a year, trying all at once to dominate the machine and to cradle it in my arms, wrestling with it for control of the ball’s manic, rebounding energy. I lost count of the plays, of the points scrolling past as the bumpers came alive and the machine’s synthetic voice begged me to keep going, just a little bit more.

It was getting hard; the game mattered too much. At the very least I wasn’t about to let Rio beat me just by playing around. The tension started building in my muscles, winding me up tight, from my hands up to my arms, from my shoulders down my back, and I started to welcome the drain, the precious few seconds of rest before I sent another ball up the ramp.

Eventually I had no more, and I slumped over the machine, exhausted, staring at the scoreboard. The numbers continued to spin, catching up to my last bonus points. Rio laughed, delighted, as he walked up behind me. “That’s very good! You’re very intense when you want to be.”

Still trying to catch my breath, I barely managed a smile.

“Close your eyes,” I heard him whisper. “Your score isn’t going anywhere.”

Cheater

Rio started… happening, I guess… in my life, a few times a week, sometimes with Jacqueline, sometimes alone. Maybe he’d always been there, curled up in that particular way of his, and I’d only just started noticing. Either way I was always happy to see him, and he always had some new, unpredictably wonderful fascination to share.

One night at Pilades, he slid up beside me and took a seat on the edge of my table, smiling just a little too much. I tried to ignore it, but he tugged insistently at the top of my newspaper, like a kitten who’s done something endearingly naughty and very much wants you to know. “Hello again,” he said, practically singing with happiness. “The Times? That’s a very good paper. I approve. And I have something to show you.”

“Rio, you are a strange, strange human being.” I folded my paper back together, shaking my head. “What do you want?”

Still smiling, he stuck out his tongue at me, then nodded over to the pinball machine. “I think she likes me.” The Billionaire’s Club listings began to scroll, glowing orange in the dim corner of the room.

I ran over to look.

Some Things are Worth a Wait

I dropped my watch the other day, breaking the glass, so I looked up a jeweler this morning and wandered in.

This time, Rio found me.

“Are you following me?” he asked, almost laughing at the absurdity of it all. I turned at the sound of his voice and found him leaning comfortably across the counter. “You know, I could have given you my number and saved you the trouble.”

“I don’t even know your name.”

“No, no you don’t, actually.” he said, his eyes glittering as he straightened and looked me up and down. With a faint smile, he brushed a speck of dust from his shirt, running his slender fingertips against the tiny antiqued-gold nametag pinned there. “I’m Rio. How may I help you?” His voice dropped, just slightly, as he tilted his head, looking at me as if he meant something more than jewelry. “What do you need?”

When I think back and wonder when I began to fall for Rio, I come back to this moment, to the way he looked at me, the way I saw myself reflected back in his eyes. It was the almost-lilt in his voice that caught me, the beautiful, casual weight of that question. “What do you need?” A small, happy noise forced itself out, deep in my chest. I handed him my watch without a word.

For a moment he considered it, holding it to his ear to hear it tick. “It’s just a broken crystal,” he said. “Call it… twenty-five, probably.”

I nodded, licking my lips. The seams of his pants were sewn with soft pink thread, highlighting his long legs and the gentle sway of his hips, and my mouth went dry as I watched him walk to the workbench in the back of the store. “Twenty-five. Right. Okay.”

“I think… ow!” he cut his finger on a stray fragment of crystal. “Uff. Yeah, I don’t have this size…” he gave his fingertip a slow, thoughtful suck as he set the watch on his table. “I think I need to grind one to fit… can you come back in an hour or so?”

“Sure. Yeah, I can do that.” His tongue was very pink, bright against his lightly tanned skin. I tried not to think too much about it as I turned to leave. Behind another counter, a very small, beautiful woman, dark and elegant in her inky-blue dress, gave me a wicked, knowing smile.

Dancing in an Empty Train

The next time I met Rio, he was just another stranger on the train, standing, half-dancing in an empty car. I almost didn’t recognize him; in the café he’d been tiny, almost delicate, but standing, half-dancing to the iPod on his hip, he was taller than I expected, slender and very nearly powerful, with long muscles gently defined just beneath his skin. He recognized me, though, and I couldn’t mistake those eyes anywhere, or the smile that flashed across his face as he caught me watching him again.

“You! You’re the boy from the other night, at Hopper’s!” He walked over, taking out an earbud, letting it hang on his shoulder.

I laughed. “First time there. A friend of mine recommended it. I like it. It’s a good thinking-place.”

“Oh, where do you normally hang out? I used to go a lot back when it was called Phillies, but not so much lately. They started using this Brazilian coffee in the mix, and it’s nice and strong, but a little too harsh for me.” He bit gently at the corner of his lip, sucking on it. “Anyhow, I saw you playing pinball when you came in first. It’s really neat, because you don’t play with just your hands. You play with your hips, too.”

“It’s the only way to bump. You have to shove the frame around, but gently, so the machine won’t catch on and say Tilt.”

“I bet you’re pretty good at it.”