Platonic (14 page)

The night before, just as he’s settling down to eat, Mark gets a text from Daniel:

Flying to London in the morning so can’t do coffee. Pretty good excuse though!

CHAPTER 7

Daniel emails Mark properly and explains two days later:

This entire thing is so last-minute, I am so sorry for ditching on coffee! You know how I mentioned that I had a few friends sniffing around London for potential new store locations? Well of course I didn’t expect anything to happen so soon but one of the contacts I made heard that there was a storefront searching for a fast rental because someone dropped out last minute. And it’s in the Newburgh district, like two blocks from Regent, not much farther from Oxford, so it’s right in the heart of up-and-coming fashion. They want a designer, something boutique and new, and obviously I’m not going to sign anything and this is way too fast but I just had to come check it out.

Mark replies and a day later Daniel fills him in some more.

I’m in a hotel suite in the middle of London and I really need to move myself into something short-term with a kitchen—God I love this city! You’ve never been, right?—and I have meetings with real estate agents and people from two of London’s high fashion shopping websites and a couple of interior decorators, all in the next two days, and this is madness! But it’s exciting.

They email as usual and Mark tries not to think about the possibility of Daniel staying any longer than he has to in London—a thought he knows is ridiculous because Daniel keeps saying the shop isn’t exactly what he’s looking for and that things are moving too fast for his liking. And more than that, Mark knows that the pattern of their friendship now is precisely as it was before Daniel went to London, when they were in the same city: emails and texts, never any speaking or seeing. He doesn’t care why they’re like that; the relationship works. And he doesn’t care that it’s irrational. He wants Daniel back in New York with him.

Two days before Daniel is finally due to fly back to the States, having already extended his trip twice and having now been away for almost three weeks, he sends Mark a text.

You said you’ve done the one-night stand thing, right? Not friends, just a completely random stranger?

Mark bites down on his lip and types a response, despite still having a couple of hours of work before he can head home and properly shift his focus to Daniel.

Yes…

It takes a couple more minutes for a new text to ping through.

So have I. But never like last night. This guy who makes my coffee gave me his number in the morning, then I met him for dinner and he just came at me. He didn’t want to know me at all. Literally just wanted the sex. It was exceptionally weird.

Mark swallows when he reads it and then rereads it. He has no idea what to say; he believes he should be interested, just not in the ways he suspects he is. He’s confused by his own response. And then Emma leans against the side of his desk with a stack of paperwork they both need to sign off on. They work for over an hour. By the time she’s gone, Mark should have forgotten about the text; but instead he snatches up his phone straightaway and checks. Another message has come through.

Sorry, I’m being very, very weird. I think I’m getting too old for this shit. And I am absolutely not ready to talk about a weird hookup with Rita. Can you imagine?

Mark sends a cautious message back:

It sounds like kind of what a typical one-night stand is meant to be. I get it though. I think. Email me? And I’ll email you in a couple hours when I get home and can talk?

When Mark gets home, the email is waiting for him. He reads it with a glass of wine and determinedly doesn’t think about it being Daniel, the boy he lost his virginity to, but instead focuses on it being his friend, with some random barista in London. The story is almost as funny as it is weird.

When Mark clicks open Daniel’s email his stomach twists. There are too many words, great blocks of description that he’s not sure he’s comfortable reading.

His name’s Lukas. He’s this tall guy, huge in the shoulders and in the thighs, Scottish, like as Scottish as you can imagine. This massive beard that I didn’t really like before we hooked up and certainly wasn’t a fan of afterward.

We met outside a little Italian restaurant and I’d expected small talk and the tip of his shoe up the inside of my calf under the table and then maybe something more afterward. Or maybe not.

Instead he just came right at me, right there in the street, and kissed me. It was savage, I mean, I’m not complaining but it was so unexpected. And then in some dark little London alley—it’s not as bad as it sounds—he just got me up against a wall. It had been so long, and I was just touch-starved, so I guess that’s why I went along with it. I mean, maybe it was some sort of romantic in a weird one-night stand kind of way, he had this leather jacket and it was all in the light of a street lamp and the shrouding mist of London…

I let it go too far… let’s just say that. I wear stupidly tight jeans sometimes because of work, because I’m supposed to look fashionable, and I went to dinner straight from a meeting and then… yeah, let’s just say things got a little too heated and I probably looked very ridiculous. I’m blushing now to remember it. Anyway.

Mark half closes the lid of his laptop and stares into the middle distance of his apartment. He can hear the ticking of the clock and his own shorter-than-usual breath. He can’t think about what he just read because in high school Daniel almost always wore horrible baggy khakis and untucked T-shirts. The idea of him all long and lean in anything tight is new and foreign and not on the table for thinking about. Except he can’t not think about it—only for a moment—and then he opens his laptop again and keeps reading.

On the way back to the apartment I tried to ask him about himself. It probably sounds silly considering how far along things were but it felt strange for me to know so little about him. Though I think he got off on the exact same thing that was weirding me out. He wouldn’t tell me his age and I still don’t know his last name or what he wants to do with his life or anything.

Mark knows the layout of Daniel’s little apartment because he’s seen photos; he knows how easily this guy would have had Daniel flat on his back on the bed.

Then he apparently went straight for his belt, wrestled the button and zipper of Daniel’s pants open, got his hands on him and claimed his prize. “That’s what I wanted,” is what Daniel writes he said.

It was literally like I was just my dick. He had zero interest in getting me out of my shoes, much less my shirt. And I’ll be the first to admit it felt good and I didn’t want it to stop but it still felt so fucking weird. I have no idea if you’ve ever encountered that but it being just about the sex, just about getting off was really. Fucking. Weird. In that moment.

But I liked it; I loved it, I guess. He had such gorgeous eyelashes. And he was good with his hands. I’ll leave the details out, but he was good with his mouth as well. Except for his stupid beard, God that wasn’t fun, and he clearly had no idea how bad it hurt because he just kept going until I was done. Which: again, good, but kind of underwhelming as well.

There’s no further explanation of how exactly Daniel came or where but Mark figures it had to be in the Scotsman’s mouth.

I can’t shake the feeling that this is so weird to be telling you but I don’t really think it should be and getting this out on the screen is going to stop me from telling Rita and she would, I promise you, pitch a fit at me for letting a stranger inside my apartment.

Anyway, you know how sex can suddenly turn gross once you’re done? Just because? Well, fully clothed, having sweated through multiple layers of cotton and denim on sheets I’d changed that morning with my stupid jacket twisted up along my spine… extra gross.

And (major TMI warning, I’m so sorry but I cannot convey how ridiculous this became without sharing the details) he wanted me to stay hard for him which was just not a thing that was going to happen and for a split second I really dreaded where things were going and then it was not fun at all because he really did want me to keep going and was touching me. I have never had to live through those little twinges of pain afterward when a guy keeps touching you and they blossomed into full-on aches but he would not let up and, honestly, it wasn’t that painful but it definitely wasn’t something I wanted. Anyhow, he came on my dick.

I am so sorry. But there you go. He literally came and went. Just did his pants back up, told me he’d see me tomorrow and left.

What the fuck am I doing with my life?

Like, is this going to be it for me? An amazing career, great friends, family that love me back home, and super average/weird sex when I can squeeze it in?

I think I’m having a bit of a crisis.

Mark thinks there should be more to the email but it just ends there and he has no idea what to say so he says nothing.

The next morning there’s a follow-up from Daniel.

I feel the need to point out that I was moderately drunk when I wrote that email, and I really have no idea whether it was entirely inappropriate because I don’t know what we are but I hope it hasn’t put you off. Don’t feel like you have to respond to any of it.

I’m looking forward to being back in New York.

Mark emails him back because it didn’t seem inappropriate; and if anything, he tells himself, it was wholly reassuring to find himself still interested without being weirdly jealous or overly turned on. It was just a close friend relaying an interesting night out. He doesn’t say that, though.

I think this was a particularly bad one-night stand. I think you can find a lot better out there and you’re freaking out over nothing. You’re not even thirty yet. Just keep having fun.

It may fall a little bit flat, but he sends it anyway. Daniel emails just before he gets on the plane to come home.

Karen is trying to get pregnant again. Baby number three. You know that’s a reason I so rarely go home even though it’s such an easy flight. Sometimes I don’t make it home more than once a year. But it’s hard going back home when Karen is there, playing perfect families. I guess it was even harder when I was fucking around a lot, keeping guys around for a few weeks, maybe a couple of months, just breakfasts and sex and more than one on the go at a time.

You know, every time I go home Mom and Dad seem proud of me, as they should be, I am doing well. And I love going back, Mom still cooks better than anyone I know and I love my dad but, Jesus, it’s hard.

I remember a couple of years ago when I made it home for Labor Day weekend, things in New York were particularly busy but I made it happen mostly out of guilt and Karen wasn’t even supposed to be there but she turned up with her husband and their kid and then announced she was pregnant with number two halfway through dinner. It was fantastic but even then it made me feel a little bit sick. Just after she’d announced it, like it was a logical follow-up to her announcing her family’s awesomeness, she asked me when I was bringing a boyfriend home because I hadn’t, not since you. I tried to brush it off, to make it all about work, but I think my mom knew even better than I did that I was sad about not having anyone. Then Karen pushed for more, to know how I was living in New York with so many available men and staying single and no one really wanted to hear that I was having lots of casual sex, enjoying myself and ignoring any desire to settle down. I don’t even remember what I said. But I didn’t say that.

I guess that feeling is really coming back now. I guess it was always there but now it feels urgent. I think I only just started to realize all of the above. Except I don’t have the time and I can never tell how much of it is me wanting it and how much of it is my family expecting it. They got so used to the idea of us. Anyhow… my family makes me do stupid things when it comes to guys, much more stupid than bad one-night stands. I’m having a mini-crisis, ignore me. I think when I get back I’m just going to leave sex and relationships alone for a little while.

And I’m rambling.

***

The emailing doesn’t stop when Daniel gets back, though it returns to safer topics than sex and love and romance. Mark still doesn’t quite understand how he feels; there’s a deep resonating pang. And he can’t figure out what he wants from Daniel because, even though the idea of them together occurs to him, it makes no sense. Patrick would say it makes perfect sense, but that’s just one more reason not to trust it.

They talk about work and the resonance between them is happier because it’s clear that careerwise, they’re both doing better than they ever imagined. The texting starts to happen more often as well, and neither one of them makes any conscious effort to examine why or stop. It feels too easy, too nice, too much like something that was missing for so long but wasn’t really noticed until it was back.

***

It’s pouring rain outside, an early spring storm cracking the sky open with persistent lightning and thunder that dulls the sounds of Brooklyn to a background buzz. Mark thinks it might signal the last few days of enjoyable coolness before summer sweeps in and makes everything hot and humid, and he is enjoying it accordingly. A bottle of red wine he can’t really afford and his duvet wait for him on the couch, to go along with the box of steaming Singapore noodles already open in his hand.