The Presents and the Past

Chapter 1-4

“Angel…” I couldn’t take my eyes off him. His glasses made him look so professional. The moustache he’d started growing senior year was a little thicker. A beard had grown in, too. Both were neatly trimmed. Dressed in a gray jacket and tie coordinating perfectly with the law firm’s décor, when he reached for a book on a shelf so high he had to do so from the ladder attached to the unit, I could see the outline of his ass. “Angel….” I said it louder. “Hi.”

He turned. “Noah,” he said, but didn’t come down right away.

I was at the front door with the fancy scrolled letters in gold. Becca’s desk and at least twelve feet of carpeting was between us, that and our turbulent past. “You remember.” I smiled nervously.

“Of course, I remember.” He set the book he’d chosen down beside a fall foliage centerpiece on a shiny console table once his feet hit the floor. “It’s only been six years.”

“Seven.”

“Oh.”

We stood still a moment, and then he came to me. Though I’d rehearsed the moment in my head a dozen times, every bit of dialogue I’d tried to commit to memory vanished when Angel hugged me.

His body felt as firm and tight as it looked. It was warm and comforting, like always, and perfectly aligned so our tummies touched, and I could snuggle into his neck. Expensive cologne had replaced the pungency of Axe body spray I’d been thrilled to experience up close in the most intimate of places on Angel’s naked body. Hell, we went back far enough for Ivory Soap and Johnson’s Baby Shampoo. I remembered those scents, too.

I inhaled deeply, then waited for the slightest shudder from Angel as I exhaled behind his ear. No matter the decade, no matter his scent, he always reacted the same.

“So…” He did it still, but this time quickly separated from me afterward. “How are you, Noah?”

“I’m good.” Except I missed his touch already. I missed it more than I had over seven long years, after the briefest reminder just how wonderful it felt. “How are you?”

He filled me in on his current doings and future plans, much of which I already knew from Becca. Angel had his whole life planned out, it seemed, leaving me to wonder if there was any room left in it for me.

“I’d ask what you do for a living,” he said, “but the brown truck, shorts, shirt, and socks kind of give it away.”

A late November Indian summer had the temperature outside feeling like Mexico in mid-April. The physical attraction I was certain still existed between us made it even hotter inside.

“Yeah. The warm days are nice.” I waited for Angel to comment as I gently stroked the abundant hair on my arm, or to maybe say something about the lushness of plushness on my bare legs. Staring at his full, pink mouth, anticipating words, all I really wanted was to kiss him.

“We should do lunch sometime.” He took a step back. “I’m kind of swamped right now. A glorified gopher, they keep me hopping around here.”

“You a gopher or a bunny?”

“Huh?” Angel’s dark eyes narrowed and the skin around them crinkled as his beautiful thick black brows came together. “Oh.” Then he chuckled. “I get it.”

Silence followed, silence between us, anyway. The pendulum of a huge grandfather clock in the lobby loudly ticked off each second as I stood there looking at Angel, willing him to say “f**k it all. f**k the legal briefs, the torts, and habeas corpus! Kiss me, Snowman! Kiss me!” I yearned to drown out the sound of that stupid clock with our moans, grunts and lip-smacking, and maybe even send it crashing to the floor as I pounded his ass hard up against it.

“Alright. Good seeing you. If Becca isn’t at the desk next time, you can just leave the stuff and go.”

The clock would live to tick another day. My hope of a kiss or more not so much.