We met on the smoke break schedule before we met as people. Same building. Different floors. Same ten-forty exodus to the loading dock where the cameras don’t point.
Nobody printed the schedule. Everybody knew it anyway. Ten-forty, the freight elevator, the back stairs past the pallets. We were the two who actually went. The rest just talked about quitting.
The dock was concrete and a drain and a wall of brick that stayed cold all summer. Two guys from shipping smoked out there with us at first. They quit coming around month three. I noticed. I didn’t say anything about it. Neither did he.
Six months of standing four feet apart. Our smoke went up and mixed into one cloud over our heads. He smoked Newports. I smoked whatever was cheap at the bodega that week. He commented on my brand once. Once. I filed it.
Month two, he said it. “I’m not really into guys.” He said it to the wall. Then he looked at my mouth for the rest of the sentence. I said okay. I said it like a man agreeing about the weather. We went back inside. He held the door. That was the whole event.
Except it wasn’t. The looking kept happening. He’d stand with his weight on one hip, thumb hooked in his belt, and watch me pull. He’d laugh at something I said two minutes after I said it. Like he’d been somewhere else and came back for the joke. I started dressing for the loading dock. The jeans that sat right. The shirt with the collar that went soft after a wash. I told myself it was for the air. The air was sixty degrees and smelled like diesel.
Month three he asked what I was doing after. Nothing, I said. He nodded like I’d passed a test. We didn’t do anything after. We smoked them down and went back up. He asked again the next week. And the next. Same words. Same nod. I started saying nothing a little slower, in case he wanted to fill the space. He never did.
He got there first some days. I’d come down at ten-forty-one and he’d already be lit. Leaning on the ledge with his cigarette going. He’d look up and his shoulders would settle. Other days I was first and I stood with the pack unopened and waited. I never asked which one he was doing. I just started leaving my desk two minutes early.
Once he came out, looked at the empty dock, and went back inside without a word. I stood there with a lit cigarette and my stomach down around my shoes. He came back four minutes later with two coffees. Handed me one. Didn’t explain.
Month four he started touching my shoulder when he talked. Two fingers. Resting there while he told me about his sister’s wedding, his car, the foreman he hated. I could feel the heat of his hand through my shirt. I didn’t move. I stood so still it turned into a thing I was doing.
Some days it rained and we stood under the awning with our shoulders touching. Water came off the downpipe and hit the drain in a steady beat. He talked the whole time. I watched his mouth and caught maybe half. Twice he brushed ash off my sleeve with the back of his hand. Twice I let him.
One day he cupped himself through his jeans while he talked. Just adjusted, mid-sentence, something about his mother’s driveway. His cock lay heavy against his thigh. He moved it with the heel of his hand and kept talking. The words went past me. That night I lay there with my hand flat on my stomach. I thought about the shape of it until I fell asleep.
Month five I made the list. No paper. Just in my head, which is worse, because it keeps. One column. One entry. His name. I’m not proud of the list. I keep it anyway. It was a fact. Facts don’t need my approval.
I put him under watching, not saying. That column got long. The way he took his gloves off before he lit up. The way he said my name when he needed a light. The way his jaw worked while he decided something and then let it go. Six months of entries. His name at the top of every one.
Six months in, waiting stops feeling like waiting. It starts feeling like a place you live. You know the loading dock at ten-forty. You know the click of his lighter. You know the half-second before he breathes out. You could do it in your sleep. You could do it with your eyes closed. I knew his boots by the sound on the stairs.
Last Tuesday it rained and then quit. He came out and lit one. Smoked half of it and put it out on the wall. Dropped the butt in the drain. He always smoked them down. He stood with the pack in his hand and looked at me. The other look. The one I’d been cataloguing since month two. He had a hard-on already. Heavy down the left leg of his jeans. He didn’t shift to hide it from me.
“You ever think about it,” he said. It came out flat. Like he already knew.
“Yeah,” I said. One word. It came out easy. That surprised me. Six months of keeping my mouth shut, and then it was just there. Small. Obvious. Like a coin on the pavement.
He put the pack in his pocket. He took a step. The dock light hummed overhead. A truck idled somewhere behind the wall. The alley smelled like diesel and old rain. He put his hand on the back of my neck. His thumb found the spot behind my ear and pressed.
“Tell me to stop,” he said.
I didn’t.
He kissed me like he’d been doing it for six months. I made a sound. He swallowed it. His other hand went to my hip and pulled me in. I let him. I let him. I let him.
He walked me back against the brick. The wall was cold through my shirt. His thigh came between my legs. I felt him through his jeans. Thick. Hot. My own cock jumped against my zipper like it had been waiting for a signal. He noticed. He looked down. He looked back up. Something in his face went from careful to decided.
“On your knees,” he said.
I went down. The concrete was wet and gritty under my knees. He undid his belt and the buckle rang in the alley. He got his jeans open and pulled his cock out. Thick. Flushed. Already wet at the tip. My mouth watered like a fucking dog.
“Open,” he said.
I opened. He fed it to me slow at first. One hand in my hair. The other braced on the wall. I took him down to my fist and then past it. He made a sound above me. Low. Rough. It went straight to my dick. I worked him with my hand and my mouth. He let me set the pace for maybe thirty seconds.
Then he stopped being polite about it. His hand fisted in my hair and he fucked my mouth. Deep. He held me at the end of every stroke until I had to breathe through my nose. Spit ran down my chin. My jaw ached. I wanted it. I wanted it so much it was embarrassing.
“That’s it,” he said. “Look at me.”
I looked up. His face was wrecked. His mouth open. His eyes half shut. His hand still fisted in my hair. He fucked my mouth harder and I took it. Took all of it. When he came he held me deep through every pulse. Groaning something with no words left in it. I swallowed around him. Throat working. Until he eased his grip and let me breathe.
I stayed on my knees a second. The concrete bit into my shins. My mouth was slick. My jaw was sore. I could still taste him at the back of my throat. He tucked himself away and zipped up. Then he put his hand out and pulled me to my feet.
He didn’t say anything. He looked at my mouth. He used his thumb to wipe the corner of it. Slow. Then he put his thumb in his mouth and sucked it clean.
“Same time Thursday,” he said.
I nodded. My knees were shaking. He picked his pack off the ledge and lit one. He offered it to me. I took it. My hand wasn’t steady. We stood there and smoked and said nothing. The truck behind the wall finally pulled away.
I went back up the stairs with my mouth still tasting like him. I rinsed at the sink on the third floor and looked at myself in the mirror. My lips were red. My hair was a mess where his hand had been. I fixed the hair. I couldn’t do anything about my mouth. The elevator had three other people in it. I kept my eyes on the floor numbers. My jaw hurt when I swallowed. I sat at my desk for two hours and got nothing done.
That night I lay in bed and replayed it. The wall. His hand. The sound he made. I got hard again thinking about it. Ridiculous at my age. I jerked off and it took about ninety seconds and I came so hard my ears rang. Then I lay there in the dark with my heart going and thought about Thursday.
Thursday I was on the dock at ten-thirty-eight. Two minutes early. He came out at ten-forty. He looked at my mouth. My jaw ached like it remembered. I still have the list. One name on it. I know what I want. I know where to be. All morning I could taste him at the back of my throat.
