The concierge just smiled and continued to hold out the card. I took it with a murmured 'konnichiwa,' and he half-bowed before moving to the other end of the counter to help the next guest. "It's a room key," I told Karl, making my voice as matter-of-fact as possible to hide the nerves. Me, nervous. That was a first. "Thought that'd be obvious." "Don't be flip, Vig, it doesn't suit you." Karl's gaze settled again on the key. "Why's there only one?" "One room." "And where's my room key?" I knew he wasn't going to make this easy for me. But, then, I hadn't wanted easy. If I'd wanted that, I could've had Elijah. "This is your room key," I told him, lifting the shoulder strap of my bag. The thin material of his jacket stretched when he crossed his arms, emphasizing broad shoulders. He was glowering. Not quite the reaction I'd wanted, but at least he hadn't tried to deck me yet. "We're sharing a room, then," he said. It wasn't a question. "Yeah. We are." "Why?" "Because --" I snapped my jaw shut, unable to think of a single thing to say. Because I was haunted by the taste of him? Because I missed the way we'd laugh in bed after sex, how those strong arms that held me down when he moved deep and sure within me would instead wrap snug around my waist? That I couldn't eat a pretzel without thinking about him, or meatloaf, and that I hadn't cut my hair in months because I remembered him saying he liked it long? "Vig?" "I --" Again, words failed. Me, the speaker, the poet. Without words. "That's what I thought." He sighed, pursed full lips in something that looked a lot like disappointment, and raised his hand to catch the concierge's attention. "Wait." He glanced back at me, dark eyebrow raised in question. "Please. Can we talk about this in the room?" Perhaps the elevator ride would give me some inspiration. The light glinted off his glasses as he looked at me, reflecting my own image back in an odd sort of mirror. I looked like hell. He looked rumpled and disheveled and utterly perfect. "Alright," he said, raking long fingers through uncombed hair. "Let's go." I didn't trust myself to speak as we walked to the bank of elevators. Images kept popping into my head -- Karl in a pair of my boxers that barely fit his frame, sticking his head in the fridge and yelling at me for drinking all the milk; Karl's fingers -- elegant, tapered -- wrapped around my cock, stroking me to completion in a dark movie theatre while his kiss swallowed my moans; the two of us lying side by side on a picnic blanket, bottles of beer forgotten beside us while I snapped pictures of the stars and he told me stories of the first Maori settlers in a rich, clear voice. "What floor?" I turned once again to face him. He was leaning against the mirrored wall, watching me with an unreadable expression. "Fifteen." He pressed the button. Silence. Fuck. "Look, I'm --" I stopped again. What was I? Sorry I never called him back, sorry I asked him to come with me, sorry that I fucked up in New Zealand? All of it, none of it? I had no answers. "What were you going to say?" I stared into his eyes for a long, charged moment -- searching for something. A clue, a sign, anything at all. When I finally spoke, it seemed like the words were coming from somewhere outside of me. "I still want you." He didn't move by so much as a flicker of an eyelash. "Is that why I'm here?" "Partially." "And what's the other part?" "I miss you." Simple as that. And maybe I'd just made this simple thing complicated because, even at my age, there were certain things I couldn't face. I wasn't ready to face him. To face what we'd been together, what we could be together. When I looked up again, he was right in front of me, blocking light, the heat of his body -- a heat I'd missed daily -- moving closer, then closer still until his chest was pressed against mine, thighs and groins brushing together. His lips were far more gentle than I'd been expecting -- we'd been much more about the heat and raw and now -- and the very delicacy of it shifted something I didn't even realized I'd missed. I opened my lips for his tongue, tasted mint and something sharp that was probably the Coke he'd had on the plane. When he stepped back, his glasses were slightly smudged and his lips were swollen. From me. I'd done that. I'd marked him. And I wanted to continue marking him until every golden inch of skin remembered me. "I missed you, too," he said, simply. We didn't mention him getting his own room again.
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