You & Me

Tuesday night finally arrived.

I’d been distracted all Monday and Tuesday, thoughts of Landon—him and me, and him, me, and our boys together like a family—devouring me. He was on my mind every moment. My coworkers looked askance at me whenever they caught me staring into space, or smiling and laughing out of the blue as I remembered another wonderful thing about Landon.

We’d texted nonstop from Monday morning on. Tuesday afternoon, he texted to ask what time I’d be leaving the office.

As soon as I can, I’d said.

I need a time.

I thought maybe he was planning some intricate dinner with everything hinging on perfect timing. 4:45? Does that work?

He texted back, Three hours and twenty-six minutes until I can kiss you again.

I cheated. I left early. At 4:45 p.m., I was already pedal to the metal on the highway.

Three hours and twelve minutes after he sent me his countdown, I was pulling up at his house. When he opened his front door, I wrapped my arms around his waist and backed him inside, kissing him once, twice, three times, each time longer, deeper than the last.

Thoughts of dinner fled. Forget food. I only needed him. He clung to me, and I clung to him, and we moved as one, backward to the living room and his couch. I pulled him to me until our chests were pressed together and I could feel his heart pounding. He grabbed me by the back of my head, fingers sliding up my neck and getting lost in my hair.

I tumbled him over the arm of his couch. We sank to the cushions again, never breaking our kiss. His leg wrapped around mine as his thighs parted. I thrust forward, grinding into him, deepening our kiss. His cock hardened against mine through my khakis and his suit pants.

My lips kissed a path to his jaw and his ear and then down his neck to his collar. I worked the buttons of his shirt as he grabbed the back of my polo. He yanked. I spread. Our undershirts were still in the way. We both fought our own off, stripping furiously before we came together again. Chest to chest, skin to skin. I moaned into his mouth. He bit down my lower lip.

I lost all sense of time as we made out. His hands were everywhere, caressing me, pulling moans from me, making me shiver and tremble and gasp his name. His fingers played in the small of my back, tickled up the valley of my spine. Drew spirals and hearts on my shoulder blades. He took my hands in his and pulled them over his head, until I was balanced on our tangled handhold and my knees, my hips still grinding into his. His belt dug into my belly, and his thighs gripped mine, clenching, releasing, clenching, guiding me into him.

We fit so perfectly together, our bodies, our minds, our hearts. Maybe even our lives, if we could figure everything out. His muscled arms and chest wrapped around me and secured me to him, and I braced my elbows on the cushion on either side of his head as I kissed my way back to his lips.

Frenzied passion gave way to something gentle. I nuzzled the hollow of his throat and breathed his name. Dropped a kiss over his fluttering pulse point. Our urgency, the on-fire need from Sunday, was softer now. I still wanted him more than I could breathe, but this wasn’t the night I was going to tear off my own pants and pull our bodies together.

Eventually, I realized we were kissing in the dark and that the sun had long set. I kissed him on his nose, his eyebrow. “Hi,” I whispered. “I missed you.”

He laughed. “I missed you, too.”

We finally untangled ourselves and drifted to the kitchen, holding hands and kissing as I backed him against the counter.

He had a bottle of wine uncorked already, along with two glasses and a homemade cheese board. We sipped the wine—a spicy Portuguese Douro—and fed each other cheese and crackers and grapes. He sat. I stood between his spread knees, one hand stroking his thigh. We were still shirtless, and he ran his thumb over my hip bone, played with the edge of my briefs over the hem of my pants.

All too soon, it was time to go. We kissed for ten minutes, until I was leaning back against the door with my arms around his neck, our bodies flush, lips to hips to knees.

“I need to go.” I kissed him again.

“I know.” He swiped his tongue across my bottom lip. “Bowen’s—” He teased my lips open until our tongues were tangling together. “—going to be home soon.”

“I need—” I groaned as his hips circled against mine, our cocks hard. “—to get milk before Emmet gets home.”

We kissed one final time, and then he put his palms against the door and pushed back. We panted, sharing oxygen, his lips still far too close. It would take nothing at all to reach forward, only a millimeter, and kiss him again—

“See you Thursday?” he whispered.

Wednesday night, Emmet declared he wanted to learn how to make the parmesan-breaded pork I’d made, and he stood in the kitchen like I was going to manifest the ingredients right then and there. I didn’t have pork—or parmesan, or bread crumbs, or oil—so we headed to the store in my truck. It was, I realized, the first time we’d been shopping together since he was old enough to sit in the front of the shopping cart.

We recreated Landon and Bowen’s fish fillet lesson at home, albeit in our smaller kitchen. My egg wash and breading were less impressive than Landon’s deft flicks of his fillet knife, but I was able to teach Emmet how to whip the eggs and milk, dip the pork cutlets, coat them with breading and shredded cheese, and then pan fry each. I turned the cooking over to him and supervised as I sipped my glass of wine. I’d bought a bottle on impulse from the store, thinking I’d try it and see if it might be something Landon would like. Emmet’s music drifted out of his phone on the counter.

“You drink wine now?” Emmet pressed the end of the pork cutlet into the sizzling oil. “Like Mr. Larsen?”

“Yeah. We’re friends. He taught me a few things.” Football, wine, a new and robust appreciation for cock and muscled bodies, as long as both belonged to Landon.

“That’s cool.” Emmet nodded. “He’s a good guy.”

“He is.”

Emmet’s stilted questions were a mirror of the way I awkwardly questioned him about his life. Sorry, son. This way with words you have is all from me.

We ate at the table together, chatting about his classes—physics still sucked, history was boring, Hamlet was “all right”—and what he thought about the home game on Friday. “This one is a really tough team. If we can beat them, we’ll probably go to the playoffs.”

I nodded, though my thoughts were hijacked by my realization. Home game. Bethany.

I’d told Landon he was welcome at my place for every home game. We’d agreed to these adult sleepovers before we were wanting to have a totally different kind of slumber party together, though. Would Landon still want to stay over? Or was that playing with too much fire?

And if he did stay the weekend, how the hell was I going to keep from kissing him, from making out with him, with Emmet in the house?

“Um, Dad?” The tines of Emmet’s fork scraped over his plate. His knee jiggled up and down beneath the table.

I closed my hand around my wineglass and fought not to throw it back in one gulp.

“Bowen’s mom is coming down this weekend and Bowen said they’re going to Austin on Saturday. He invited me to go with them. Is that cool?”

“To see the city?”

“To go visit the campus. The University of Texas is recruiting Bowen hard. He and his dad went down to see the school at the end of his junior year, but now his mom wants to check it out.”

“What about you? Are you thinking of UT, too?”

We’d made so much progress together, but there were still trip wires and land mines and bear traps scattered in all the conversations we hadn’t had. Emmet’s gaze dropped to the table, and his expression hardened. He went stiff, muscles tightening, lips thinning. Whoever had just been sitting with me, chatting pleasantly, if stiffly, had disappeared.

Had he talked about college with his mother? Did Riley know his hopes and dreams? Was that why he locked up whenever I tried to ask? “Have you thought about what you want to do? Maybe play football like Bowen?”

He shrugged, stood, and took his plate to the sink. Rinsed it and put it in the dishwasher. “Are you finished?”

I nodded. He took my plate and did the same. His music still pulsed softly in the background.

“Yes, you can go to Austin with Bowen and his mom,” I said. “I hope you have a good time. If you want me to iron clothes for you for Friday, hang them on your doorknob, please.”

“Thanks.” He collected his phone and headed upstairs. He wouldn’t look my way. I heard his door open and shut and then a plastic hanger swing against the wood.

I finished my wine and spun my empty glass. Emmet was an enigma who, as soon as I thought I had figured out, shifted. Revealed a new shade of pain, a new way I’d hurt and failed him.

Maybe he’d end up enthralled with the University of Texas and decide that was the college for him. Maybe he was going to follow Bowen down there and they’d play year after year together until they graduated college. If Emmet was as good as everyone said he was—and how would I know?—then maybe he could play for the NFL.

It would be an ironic sort of fate, I thought, if I, who still couldn’t throw a football, ended up with a professional football player for a son.

Maybe Emmet needed time with a mom again. I knew my limits. I was Emmet’s father, but I was a poor substitute for a maternal touch. Maybe a few days with Bethany—

Shit. Bethany.

Bethany knew about Landon and me. Well, not really, because we weren’t together when I’d pretended Landon and I were more than friends the first time I met her. I’d thought that little white lie wouldn’t have repercussions because I’d never imagined Landon and I could ever, would ever, be more to each other. If Emmet heard about my fib, I’d thought I could explain it away, tell him I was helping Landon out. Emmet would understand that, surely.

What if Bethany said something to Emmet? What if Emmet came to me and demanded the truth? What would I say to him if he asked me if I was dating his best friend’s father? I wouldn’t lie to him.

What if he asked me if I was in love with Landon? I knew where I wanted to go and what I wanted us to be, but… We needed more time.

I pulled my phone out and texted Landon. Hey. You’re coming over this weekend, right? Because Bethany is in town?

I was planning on it. Heart eyes emoji.

Emmet said he’s going to Austin with Bethany and Bowen this weekend. College visit.

So we have the house to ourselves?

My heart skipped a beat. My heel bounced against my chair rung. I was thinking about Bethany. She ‘knows’ about us.

Landon’s next text didn’t arrive until after I’d set up Emmet’s cereal bowl and spoons, washed out his blender, and set it and his peanut butter back on the counter. I can talk to her and ask her to keep what she believes to herself. I’ve never involved Bowen in my relationships before. She knows that.

The word relationships hit me hard. How many had Landon had? Who had come before me? How long had he dated them? Why didn’t they work out?

Would I end up a has-been in Landon’s rearview mirror one day?

I texted him after I crawled into bed, once I got my dizzying thoughts under control. I want to be the one to tell Emmet when the time is right. I don’t want him to hear about us from someone else.

Fear stroked my insides, made me feel like I’d plunged beneath the surface of a frozen lake when I thought of how Emmet might react to me and Landon. What if I found the love of my life but lost my son?

I know. Heart emoji. I’ll see you tomorrow, Luke. Only eighteen hours to go.

When I pulled up at the athletic center, Landon was waiting outside. He turned to the parking lot as my truck rumbled up. Our eyes met through my windshield. He smiled.

Landon had rolled up the sleeves of his button-down and thrown his volunteer T-shirt overtop. On another man, that would have looked sloppy or unkempt, but not on him. His forearms were on display, as was the tan patch of skin at the hollow of his throat. My lips had nibbled on that spot. I knew what he tasted like both above and below his collar. Knew how he shivered when I bit down on his earlobe and pushed my nose into the juncture of his neck and jaw.

Two days was an eternity to be apart from Landon. We were as insatiable with each other on Thursday as we’d been on Tuesday, except now we had to restrain ourselves in public. In private, we devoured each other. In the ice room, backing each other into the stack of coolers as we kissed, trying to get our hands beneath each other’s shirts to feel skin. I needed to wave icy air under my shirt to calm me down before I could leave.

We kept making eyes at each other while the team paraded through the buffet line. Tonight’s meal was simple: pizza, salad, and breadsticks. Of course, two hundred teenagers made anything the opposite of simple. Most kids skipped the salad but loaded up on the self-serve dressings. They tried to smother their pizza slices in ranch or Thousand Island or blue cheese. Dressing ended up smeared on the tables, the floor, and the boys themselves.

Emmet and Bowen were last through, like always. Marianne offered them a box of pizza to split. They piled Caesar salad on top and grabbed two forks.

“It’s like they were raised in barns,” Landon said.

We watched the first fifteen minutes of practice and then split for the parking lot. Landon looked left and right before he pushed me against the side of my truck and kissed me until I thought the earth was quaking. I grasped his hips and held on, squeezing him to me even after his lips left mine. We stared into each other’s eyes, listening to whistles blow and the sounds from the stadium drift over us. I heard Bowen clapping and calling for a reset. Heard Emmet call a hike. One more kiss. Our lips met, eyes open. My heart felt like it was about to burst.

I’d picked a new restaurant to try, a Thai place neither of us had been to. Its best feature, which I’d found through Google reviews, was that it was dim and atmospheric and had booths with high backs that offered lots of privacy. I held his hand the whole seven-minute drive there. We were led to a booth in a corner, and instead of sitting across from each other, Landon slid beside me on the bench seat.

We ordered pad thai and ignored it. Held hands and talked and sneaked kisses every other minute. Time flew when we were together, unlike when we were apart, and all too soon, we had to head back to pick up Bowen and Emmet from practice.

I pulled over before we got to the stadium. Threw my truck in park, unbuckled my seat belt, and dragged him over the center console so I could kiss him one more time. We were both breathless when we pulled apart, our noses brushing, my eyelashes fluttering against his forehead as I kissed his eyes. “Until tomorrow,” I whispered.

“Eighteen hours.” He kissed me again.

“I already miss you.”

“We have the weekend.” He nuzzled my jaw, my neck. I shivered, both from his touch and the thought of him and me alone for two days together. How could I hold myself back when he set me on fire every time we came near each other? Was I really going to say good night to him and leave him on my couch? If I brought him into my bed… would I let him leave?