First Touch of Fire

The air in O'Malley's was thick with beer and bad decisions. I was on my third whiskey, watching the foam slide down the side of my glass, telling myself I was just here for the game. The Celtics were losing. I didn't care. I was here because my apartment felt like a cage and the silence was starting to talk back.

Then he sat down two stools away.

Not close enough to be obvious. Not far enough to be accidental. He ordered a Guinness and the bartender knew his name. Ryan. The way he said it, like a handshake. Solid. Sure of itself.

I clocked him in pieces. First the hands. Big hands. A silver ring on his thumb that caught the light when he lifted his glass. Then the jaw. Stubble, dark and deliberate. Then the eyes. They found mine in the mirror behind the bar and held on a beat longer than strangers do.

I looked away first. Always do.

The whiskey burned going down. I ordered another.

Third time I looked, he'd turned on his stool. Facing me now. Legs apart. Elbows on the bar. Like he was waiting for me to catch up to something he already knew.

"You're not watching the game," he said.

His voice was lower than I expected. A rumble that settled somewhere below my ribs.

"Neither are you."

He smiled. Not a smirk. A real one. The kind that starts in the eyes and works its way down.

"Caught me."

I should have paid my tab and left. That's what straight Tony would have done. Straight Tony who had a girlfriend for three years and a ring picked out in a drawer. Straight Tony who went to the gym and watched football and never once let his eyes linger on the curve of a man's shoulder in the locker room.

But straight Tony was a lie I was tired of telling.

"What's your name?" he asked.

I told him. He said it back like he was tasting it. Tony. Two syllables. He made them last.

"First time?" he asked.

The question landed like a punch I didn't see coming. I opened my mouth. Closed it. The bartender slid my fourth whiskey in front of me and I grabbed it like a life raft.

"That obvious?"

He shook his head. "I just know the look. The way you're holding yourself. Like you're about to bolt or jump out of your skin. I've been there."

I drank. The whiskey did nothing. "How long ago?"

"Eight years. Different bar. Different city. Same look on my face." He leaned in. Close enough I could smell him. Soap. Leather jacket. Something underneath that was just him. "You don't have to decide anything tonight. We can just talk."

But we didn't talk.

We left together. His hand on the small of my back as we walked out. A pressure that said I'm here. You're okay. The cold air hit my face and I realized I was shaking. Not from cold.

His apartment was three blocks away. Red brick. Fire escape. A cat that wound between my ankles as soon as the door opened. He called her Junebug. She ignored him.

The place was lived in. Books stacked on the floor. A guitar in the corner. Dishes in the sink. Real. Unpretentious. He hung my jacket on a hook and I stood in the middle of his living room like a man who'd never seen walls before.

"You want a drink?"

"No."

He nodded. Didn't push. Just stood there in the soft yellow light from a lamp with a stained shade, giving me space to run if I needed to.

I didn't run.

I crossed the room and kissed him.

It was clumsy. Too much teeth. I'd never kissed a man before and my body didn't know the choreography. But his hands came up to my face and he slowed me down. Softened the angle. Taught me with his mouth what I couldn't ask for with words.

He tasted like Guinness and something sweeter. His beard scratched my chin in a way that sent a current down my spine. I made a sound I didn't recognize. He swallowed it.

"Easy," he whispered against my lips. "We've got time."

But I didn't want time. I wanted to stop thinking. Stop second-guessing. I wanted to be in my body for once instead of trapped in the endless loop of what if and what will people think and what does this mean.

I pushed his jacket off his shoulders. He let it fall. His hands found the hem of my shirt and he pulled back just enough to ask permission with his eyes. I nodded. He lifted it over my head.

His gaze traveled down my chest. Slow. Appreciative. Like he was reading a book he already knew he loved.

"You're beautiful," he said.

I almost laughed. Thirty-two years old and no one had ever said that to me. Not like that. Not like they meant it.

I pulled him close again. Skin to skin. His chest was warm and solid against mine. His hands on my back. Mine in his hair. We stumbled toward the bedroom without breaking the kiss and I felt the edge of the mattress hit the back of my knees.

He lowered me onto the bed. Followed me down. Braced himself on his forearms so he was hovering, a solid weight above me, and I felt something crack open in my chest.

"You're okay," he said again. "You're okay."

I believed him.

His mouth found my neck. My collarbone. My chest. Each kiss a question. Each touch a conversation I was only beginning to learn the language of. I arched into him. Let him take the lead. Let myself feel everything I'd been locking away for years.

The city hummed outside the window. A siren in the distance. Junebug meowed from the doorway.

And I lay there, under a man I'd met three hours ago, and for the first time in my life, I wasn't pretending.