Angels' Dares (Part 3)

Read Part 1. Part 2.

Each door slams. Sheltered, I experience the rain as rhythm, and I know he does, too. Sound, for each of us, is sex, and that would make this situation very bad. Or good. You know, depending. I stare at the windshield as if seeking divinity in the ever-shifting patterns of the raindrops.


"Which museum are we going to, exactly?"

He is as in love with subtext as I am, and this I love about him. He lives beneath the blatant, where no one expects to find him, where I must seek him out. That pretty people never live where they can't be seen is a lie. I smile, liking that he faces down fabrication with faux belief, leaving me two choices: lie more, or lie down. I submit to the obvious.

And then skip right over it.

"You didn't care where. You were coming anyway."

Now I will look at him because now it is he who must choose, and there is nothing more alluring than a man caught mid-thought. I watch as the challenge courses through him: brow-raise, blink, half-smile, lip-nibble, the glimmer of teeth, the tip of his tongue as he wets his lips as if about to speak. I say "as if" because he wants me to think he's about to speak. Mostly, he wants me to wait longer. I speak instead.

"You don't have to answer. I like making it easy for you."

A full smile now, as men are wont to show when they get what they want without having to work for it, and the hint of a laugh as he tosses out the question idly, "And why would you want to do that?"

The answer has hovered about our every interaction to this moment, and stretches forward into every second we will ever share: he desires most what other men cannot have. This is know, and this I give him.

"Because you know I make it difficult for everybody else."