“Brendan, can I talk to you?”
Brendan turned from Will and said, “Ey, Dena. Yeah. What’s going on?”
Dena looked at Will, and Will cleared his throat.
“I’ll go see what Layla’s up to.”
“I’m sure she’d love to hear from you,” Dena told him, as Will walked away.
Brendan jammed his hands in his pockets.
“What’s going on, Denie?”
“Layla’s and my Mom are going out tonight,” Dena said.
“All right.”
“Brendan?”
“Yes?”
“I was saying… If you wanted us… to… make love… Tonight would be the night.”
When Brendan said nothing, Dena said, “You wanted to. I mean, if you don’t want to—”
Brendan took her face in his hands, a little roughly.
“Denie! I want to. All right?”
Dena nodded.
Brendan bent down and kissed her.
“I love you, Denie. You know that?”
Dena nodded and said, “I love you too. I gotta go. Layla and Will are coming, and I don’t want her asking questions.”
“Yeah, Chris,” Tom was saying over the phone. “You just come on in tomorrow, and… yeah. We’ve got something for you. I mean, just for you. Yeah… Yes. Well, who knows? Maybe the lead in the next….” Tom looked up, “play.”
Brian Babcock, looking furious, stood in the doorway. His hair was almost a mess and his nostrils were flared.
“I’ll see you tomorrow, all right? Gotta go… Yes,” Tom said mouthing, “I’ll be with you in a minute,” to Brian, “All right. Goodbye.”
He hung up the phone.
“Brian.”
Brian looked incredulous. In one disgusted word he said, “Don’t-Brian-me.”
“I don’t… What’s going on?”
“What is going on? Why is Fenn’s cousin here. Are you fucking him right now like you were fucking him all night?”
“Close the door, Brian,” Tom said.
Sharply, Brian did.
“I came by last night. You know that? But you were occupied. You were so occupied when I called later on you never picked up the phone. And I see why. You couldn’t have Fenn so you went for the closest thing. Were you thinking about Fenn when you were fucking his cousin? Or letting his cousin fuck you?”
“Brian,” Tom’s voice was mellow. “I was having a really good day—”
“Of course you were. It was just like old times. It must have been just like Fenn.”
“Look,” Tom’s voice hardened. “I told you. I’m telling you now. I told you way back then. Never bring up Fenn. Never ever ask about what goes on or what went on in my bed with Fenn. Same thing applies to Lee. For the first time this decade I was with someone I loved.”
“You son of a bitch,” Brian hissed.
“What? No, hell no,” Tom stood up, disgusted. He rounded the desk.
“We’re not anything, Brian. We never have been and I never told you we could be. You don’t get to be the grieving cheated on lover. I mean, you really don’t. For… let me count… nine years, me and my best friend had a life together. We were in love. We were happy. Things got a little rough and you, knowing exactly what you were doing, decided that your desire to suck my dick mattered more than my relationship with Fenn. The problem with my stupid, stupid ass was that apparently… this is too stupid! I agreed with you. I fucking agreed.
“And you… you don’t have any goddamned remorse in your heart. You don’t have any… I’m sorry I ruined someone’s… marriage. That’s what it was. There’s not shame. You don’t feel anything in your heart. All you think is, Tom isn’t mine. I can’t have Tom. Almost ten years ago you decided that if you couldn’t have me, no one could, Brian. If I couldn’t be happy with you, I couldn’t be happy at all.
“Fenn was my heart. He was my heart. We were… we were like the same fucking person. We loved each other. You decided to destroy that and I helped you and… and… he’s happy for me. He’s happy, but you’re miserable. You are one miserable son of a bitch. I don’t owe you anything but what I gave you.”
“Your dick,” Brian said tersely. He turned around and was getting ready to open the door when he said, “You know what Tom?”
“What?” Tom said, wearily.
“I used to think that you only gave me your dick because… I don’t know what… Because I wasn’t good enough. I wasn’t Fenn. I wasn’t… fuck! Whatever. But you did give me yourself, because that’s all you are is a dick.”
“You don’t have a heart.” Tom said.
Brian walked out, closing the door because he didn’t slam. Then a second later, on the other side of the frosted glass, Tom saw Brian’s shape, the door opened and for one second Tom caught his high cheekbones, his dark eyes, his curling dark hair and he realized why he had destroyed a relationship. Brian was breathtakingly beautiful. Even now, years later. Imagine when he was fresh out of graduate school. And while Tom was thinking all of this Brian flung open the door and bellowed:
“Fuck you! I do have a heart, and you don’t know what the fuck is in it.”
There was a tap at the door, and Fenn lifted a finger in the middle of talking to Paul before shouting up the steps, “I’ll get it, Todd!”
Brian Babcock was at the door and Fenn, raising an eyebrow, opened it and let him in.
“I need to talk to you.”
“Really?”
“Yes.”
Fenn opened his mouth, shut it, turned around and said, “Paul, can I have a minute?”
Paul nodded and went up the backstairs.
“Brian, you look kind of… bad.”
Brian smiled and said, “Yeah.”
His face was drawn and red. His eyes were red.
“I… was thinking. Okay, I was crying. I don’t do that. Not in a long time, and I had to come here.”
Fenn nodded.
“See, you’ve been really long suffering with me, and… This morning I was angry. I was angry because of Tom and Lee. I’ve been angry for so much I didn’t have a right to be, but… today I cried. I mean, a lot. I went to Saint Barbara’s, just to be quiet, and then I just knew I was going to fall apart, and so I got in my car and did it.
“The funny thing was I thought, at first, that it was selfish me crying about how I couldn’t have Tom, or… But that was never like me. I.. ah… ”
Brian didn’t say anything for a moment. He seemed, almost, to have lost his train of thought.
“I guess I was crying about me. About this person I am, this… thing. Fenn. I.. thought I was sorry. I thought I saw that I was sorry. But… I don’t think I ever was sorry, and ashamed of what I did. To you. Not until now. I was never sick over it, and I’m embarrassed that I’m sick about it now. I’m ashamed of the fact that everyday for years when you’ve seen me you’ve seen this… asshole who had no concept of what he had done who…
“And I’m being the asshole again… who takes your time. I just wanted you to know, Fenn… how sorry I am. I… should go now.”
“Brian.”
Brian turned around.
“You don’t look well. Do you want to stay for awhile?”
“I’m fine. I’m not going to do anything stupid. Heck, I might start doing something smart. I just need to go home.”
“Brian, I’m not angry with you. Not now. Not anymore. When it happened, I thought… When it happened I wanted to die. I wanted to kill myself. I made like I wanted to kill you, and Thom. But… I felt…not good enough. I felt ugly, and stupid. That’s the truth.”
Brian wanted to turn away. He wanted to not have to hear this. It hurt to hear it. He’d been crying all that afternoon. He thought he was cried out, but the tears kept coming hot, down his face.
“And then I hated you… For making me feel like that. For a long time. But… it’s in the past. Where it should be.”
“I’m sorry,” Brian’s voice was shaky, “For ever making you feel that way. I’m sorry.”
Fenn nodded.
“I should leave now.”
“You look terrible.”
“I feel terrible,” Brian told him. Then he shrugged and a grin crossed his face. He began to laugh a little.
When Fenn cocked his head and looked to him, Brian explained.
“I feel like shit. But I feel human.”
“It wasn’t like I thought it would be. I mean… It wasn’t bad. It was nice, we kissed and everything. It really wasn’t bad, but…”
“Well, you know, it’s not the movies. I heard the first time is always bad,” Will said.
“God, I wish you weren’t a virgin,” Brendan said.
Will looked at him.
“No,” said Brendan. “What I mean is, then you could tell me… from experience. If I did it right. I mean, I did come. I came. So it wasn’t terrible.”
Will turned away.
“I’m sorry, I shouldn’t…” Brendan began.
“It’s not that you shouldn’t. It’s just… it’s weird for me, listening to you talk about… having an orgasm.”
“This whole thing is weird for me. Will, you know what I felt like?”
“Hum?”
“Even… when it got good I mean.”
“When you came?”
“Yeah…” Brendan was quiet. He sat up and tucked his knees under his chin looking at Will so intensely it was almost a glare.
“I felt,” Brendan told him, “like… I was faking it. Like this whole thing, me, making love to Dena, didn’t feel right. Like I was trying to be someone else. And… I wasn’t me.”
When Brendan was gone, Dena Reardon knew, without a shadow of a doubt, that she could not, absolutely not, tell Layla about having sex with Brendan. She couldn’t tell anyone. She wanted to tell her mother. This was impossible. She thought, impossibly, of Adele Lawden. Not her mother, not her best friend, mother of her best friend. For a reason she could not identify, the thought of telling Milo Affren terrified her. She felt, thinking about him, and thinking about Brendan… No. No. She couldn’t describe the feeling. She wanted to hide it from him was the best way she could describe that feeling.
They had began kissing in that old way, the way that eventually lit up a spark in her, but this time they went further, hands on shoulders, on hips, all over their bodies. This was making out with a destination in mind.
Brendan began to undo his belt and Dena said, almost sharply: “Get the light!”
He did, and in the darkness they fumbled with belts and jeans and underwear, shocked at the touch of skin. She fell back at first, frightened a little by the feeling of what she knew was Brendan’s penis, growing, becoming erect. She fought between a fear and a desire to touch it, touch him. She did, she jerked it and he moaned.
Clumsily, kissing, bodies together, they climbed onto the bed in the darkness.
This whole thing. When it happened it didn’t seem that great, but thinking about it made it better. Did that made any sense? Awkwardly she had opened her legs for him, and then she felt Brendan Miller’s narrow, naked hips between them. She felt the weight of his torso across hers, the smell, like Wonder bread, of his body. Her hands closed around the warm, boniness of his back, went up to caress the shoulder blades, touch his hair, kiss his mouth.
“Am I in?” he whispered.
“Not… quite.”
She guided him. It felt strange, a little uncomfortable at first. But it didn’t hurt. It felt, just a little, like someone sticking something someplace where it had no business. And then he began to slide in and out of her, to push in and out of her and it felt… good.
In that last part, where she looked at his face, and his eyes were closed, and he was somewhere else, shooting toward someplace else, and by the rhythm of his hips, him inside of her, taking her with him, it felt so good. He kept kissing her, his eyes closed. He was hungry like she hadn’t known him before, sucking on her throat. He was now, with a jarring shock, fucking her. And then he rose up out of her, rigid, and she felt his semen shoot across her stomach, hot and slick against her. Dena held onto a body corkscrewing out of control, a long, “Oooooooo,” sounding from his mouth like a horn.
She’d held him to her like that for awhile as their bodies stilled. She didn’t have an orgasm as far as she knew, but it had been good to her, making love to Brendan. Dena had been told many things about having sex before marriage and especially about girls having sex before marriage. She had taken a dubious bet that they wouldn’t be true, at least not for her. But when she’d let Brendan into the house, suddenly she was afraid they all would be; a piece of her soul would be lost, and her respect would be gone. To her surprise, however, when Nell shouted up that she was finally home, Dena realized, sitting alone in her room that night, she was not scared, or insecure, and she did not feel violated.
She felt like she wanted it again.
