The Presents and the Past

Chapter 1-3

“I don’t like to remember the last time Angel touched me.” That was the all I offered Troy as I returned from the journey I’d taken in my mind. “But I can…quite vividly.” My hand hadn’t moved from my cheek.

The fudgy thing was more like candy, one bite, really, so I took another. Better to eat my feelings away, I figured, than to revert to some of the alternatives I’d tried in the past.

“Things got different, of course, between kindergarten and the day we went our separate ways. A brush of my bare, hairy arm during b-ball felt suddenly erotic. Angel always teased me about my hairiness. One day, he tripped on the rung where the benches are bolted to the floor in the locker room. We were alone, the last ones in the whole building, maybe. We were naked and all of him was against all of me.”

Troy was suddenly super-focused on his cupcakes.

“Sorry.” I walked over to check out his work. “Never take for granted how great it is to feel a certain person’s skin against your own. When I was happy, when I was sad, when I was scared, even when we got in trouble, as long as Angel was there—”

“Ong-hel.” Troy smiled.

“Yes. As long as he was there, things were better. I never appreciated that enough, until it was too late. Angel gave me more second chances than I deserved, Troy. I realized that as I watched from the train as he got smaller and smaller, farther away, like my mom when she left me at school and went home with my dad. I’d f****d up one time too many and lost him for good,” I lamented.

“You’ve changed, Snowman. The good stayed good and the demons are gone.”

I put my arm across Troy’s shoulder and pulled him into me, even though his messy, sticky hands prevented him from bro-hugging me back. “Never gone,” I said, “but under control. Angel and I haven’t spoken in years, but now he’s back.”

“Yeah?” Troy was never still.

“Yup. Working as a legal assistant at Brockman, Pointe, Weller, and Phipps.” I followed him to the other side of the shop. “He hopes to take the Bar Exam in early 2018 and join the firm as an attorney and eventually a partner. I learned most of that from the receptionist up front. Becca and I are tight. Brockman, Pointe, Weller, and Phipps get a lot of packages.”

Cookies, scuttlebutt, and being invited to lavish holiday parties—my job had several plusses.

“My ears perked up when she first mentioned a sexy, young apprentice who’d recently come back to town to join the practice. My everything perked up when she mentioned his name. Angel…after all this time. Just imagine my surprise.”

“Have you seen him in person?”

“I have. My heart’s in my throat every time I walk through their door thinking, ‘What if?’ Then one day, there he was, more handsome than ever. The first time I just waved. He nodded, and then I dropped my packages and headed back out the door. At least I didn’t cry.”

Troy sometimes thought I was funny. That was part of the reason I liked him so much.

“Maybe I should have, come to think of it.”

“Worked the first time.”

“True that. We did finally speak, though, even without tears.”

“And…?”

This time, I took Troy with me, to a far more recent encounter.