The honey jar sits on the nightstand. It’s been there since Nico’s grandmother sent it in a padded envelope, for our throats. It’s half empty. My cock has been hard since about four this afternoon. That’s roughly when the wedding invitation went back on the fridge. It’s been collecting dust there for three weeks.
Twenty years. That’s the number. We met at a bad party in 2006. We were twenty-four, stupid, and broke. We’ve shared this apartment on the eleventh floor for nineteen of those years. We’ve shared this bed for all of them. In two decades, we’ve never fucked. Not once.
We have a cat. His name’s Rutherford. He’s ancient, and blind in the left eye, and he hates Danielle. She’s marrying my best friend in four months. That’s the only thing we agree on completely and without reservation. We’ve agreed on it for six months now, every time she comes over.
We have a way of talking that isn’t talking. I pass him the coffee and the handle’s turned toward his hand. That’s a sentence. He looks at the fridge, then at me. That’s a whole paragraph. I’ve learned to read it. What it said was I’m not ready yet. I put the shopping away and said nothing. That was the end of that. There have been about four hundred of those.
We haven’t fucked once in twenty years. I want to be clear about one thing: it wasn’t caution. We’re the least careful people I know. We’ve shared a bathroom and a bed and a cat and every heartbreak since we were twenty-four. There have been a lot of them. We didn’t avoid sex. It never occurred to either of us.
Or no. That’s a lie too. I’m the one who has to live with it.
There were two times. The first was 2007, the night of his mother’s funeral. A hotel in Joliet with a bathtub in the room. We were in the bath together because the room only had one. My hand was on his thigh. He said “Marc.” I said “yeah.” Then the phone rang. It was his sister. It was the church about the flowers. That was that.
The second was 2015. After the thing with Elena, which I’m not going to describe. This bed, in the dark. I got up and put my socks on. I went and sat on the edge of the bath. He came and stood in the doorway for a while. Neither of us said anything. Then he said “it’s alright, mate,” and went back to bed.
Twenty years isn’t a decision. It’s two almosts and a lot of mornings.
She’s nice. She teaches kindergarten. She has a laugh you can hear from the lift. When she asks about us she says “you two are like an old married couple.” I say “yeah.” Nico changes the subject to the price of airline tickets.
The invitation’s on the fridge under a magnet from Prague. He hasn’t RSVP’d. I’m supposed to be best man. I haven’t written the speech. Last Tuesday she texted me. The fiancée, not Nico. She texts me now. She has my number, because she’s going to need it. “how’s the best man speech coming??”
I said “coming.”
Nico saw me read it. Nico sees everything. He read my childhood diary over my shoulder at a barbecue in 2011. He’s never once let it go. I’ve never once wanted him to.
We used the honey for the first time last Tuesday. In the kitchen, at two in the afternoon. We didn’t talk about it. We haven’t talked about it since. It’s the loudest thing in this apartment.
His grandmother sent the honey with instructions. A note in her handwriting. The handwriting slanted hard to the right. It said: for the throat, a spoonful in warm water, and for the chest, rub it in the skin, and it will do what medicine cannot. We were twenty-six. We put it on the shelf above the fridge. It sat there for a decade.
Then last Tuesday I came home at two in the afternoon with a fever and no medicine. Nico was on the sofa in his boxers. The jar was on the coffee table. He said “you’ve got the look.” I said “I’ve got what.” He said “the look of a man who has read the note.”
I want to be accurate about what happened. He drank a spoon of it in warm water, the way the note said. Then he took my temperature with his mouth. It’s a joke. A completely indefensible joke. Then he said “it’s still an infection.” I said “that’s a terrible diagnosis.” He said “come here.” I went.
Eleven minutes. That’s how long it took us to establish we could do this. For eleven minutes neither of us said a word about it. The cat watched from the arm of the sofa. Afterwards he got up and put the jar back on the shelf above the fridge. I made coffee. We watched something neither of us was watching. I went to bed. He came in at four and lay down on his side, facing away from me. He’s faced away from me every night for twenty years. Except this time I could see the back of his neck was red.
A jar of honey and a red neck. Twenty years of not doing this, and that is where it lands.
Then we did it again nine days later. Then eleven days after that.
We haven’t discussed it once. We haven’t scheduled it. It happens the way weather happens, in the gaps. The gaps are getting wider. On Tuesday the fourteenth it happened twice. I came so hard I couldn’t see. Afterwards I said into his shoulder “I’m going to have to tell Danielle.” He said “no you aren’t.” I said “Nico.” He said “no you still aren’t.” That was the first thing either of us said out loud about any of it.
We’re on the balcony now. It’s two in the morning. It’s twenty-eight degrees. The city’s doing the thing where the fog sits in the streets. The towers stand out of it like they’re floating. Two of the tall ones have red aircraft lights. The rest of it is dark.
“I want to ask you something,” he says.
“Okay.”
“Don’t.”
“Okay.”
He finishes his beer. I have the jar. It’s the good honey. The expensive one. The last of the jar. It’s gone thick. It’s crystallised at the bottom. It isn’t pouring. It’s coming out of the spoon in strings.
“Twenty years,” he says.
“Twenty years.”
“I can’t do this and then go to that wedding.”
“I know.”
“Danielle is a good person.”
“I know that too.”
“And you know what the worst part is.” He turns the bottle around in his hands. “The worst part is I have already thought about who I want to sit next to at the reception. And it isn’t going to be her.”
My stomach drops about a foot.
“Nico.”
“I’m not asking you to say it. I’m telling you that I already said it, to myself, in March, and I have been carrying it around like a stone in a shoe, and every time you came over to watch the game I wanted to put my hand on the back of your neck and I did it four times and you never turned around.”
“Four times.”
“Four.”
He looks at me. He’s looked at me like that roughly nine hundred times. I’ve never once been able to say what I’m about to say.
“I know,” I say. “Me too.”
“I said don’t.”
“I’m not saying anything.”
“You’re saying it with your face.”
Then he says the thing he actually came out here to say. He’s scared. He doesn’t clarify of what. I’ve known him for twenty years. He’s never once been scared of anything with a shape. He’s shaking. It’s the cold. It’s twenty-eight degrees, and he’s in a t-shirt.
He puts his hand out and finds the back of my neck. He leaves it there. His fingers are cold. Neither of us moves. The fog goes on doing its thing below us. A siren goes somewhere. Neither of us looks.
“Nico.”
“I know.”
“Tell me to go inside.”
“No.”
“Then don’t.”
“I won’t.”
That’s how it happens. Twenty years in, on a balcony, with a jar of honey and a cat named after a physicist who never got the formula right.
He goes first. Of course he goes first. He’s always gone first at everything. He takes the jar and turns it over. He says “hold this.” I hold it. He opens his mouth.
It isn’t what the note said. Nothing about it is what the note said. He gets the thick crystallised part off the bottom with his finger. Puts it in his mouth. Then he takes the spoon. I hold the jar. He scoops and looks up at me over the rail, the spoon in his mouth. He says “mm.” It’s the most obscene and the most tender thing anyone’s ever done on a balcony. My cock’s so hard in my jeans it hurts. I say “Nico.” He pulls the spoon out and says “you’re going to come on my face.”
“You don’t know that.”
“I know you. You’ve been like this since the note.”
He gets me sitting on the low wall. My back’s against the railing. My knees are open. The city’s below me. He kneels on the balcony floor. He takes my cock out of my jeans and wraps his hand around it. Then he licks the honey off my fingers. All of them. One at a time. He says “you taste like the throat thing.” I say “you drank all of it.” He says “I drank most of it.”
Then he puts the honey on me. He puts it on my cock with his hand, the whole length of it. Thick and cold and too much. It slides. He works it in with his palm until my cock is slick and shining. The smell of it is everywhere. Honey and salt. He says “there,” satisfied, like a man who has completed a form.
He takes me into his mouth. First time in twenty years. I make a sound that wakes Rutherford. He comes to the balcony door and sits and watches.
He takes his time. Twenty years of taking his time with everything. The lease. The funeral. The time I said I was fine and he knew I wasn’t. His throat is tight. His hand’s pumping me in time with his mouth. The honey’s going everywhere. In his mouth, down his chin, on my hips. I’ve got my fingers in his hair. I’m saying his name like it’s the only word in the language.
He pulls off. He wipes his mouth with the back of his hand. Looks up at me and says:
“You do this so naturally, Nico. You’re the best lifting partner and even better at this.”
I’m laughing. Laughing and crying. I’ve never been lifted by anybody in my life. His grandmother made this honey for throats and chests. She never once imagined it. He’s just used it on my cock on a balcony in Chicago, and then told me I’m good at it.
“What?” he says.
“Nothing.”
“You were laughing.”
“You can’t say that.”
“Why not.”
“Because you’ve never said anything nice to me in twenty years.”
“I’ve said plenty of things.”
“You’ve said there’s a leak in the bathroom and your mum’s right about the car.”
“I said you’re good at it.”
“Yeah,” I say. “You did.”
He goes back to work. I stop being able to think.
Then we do him. The other half. The half that’s been waiting twenty years. He turns around and kneels over the low wall, forearms on the balcony rail, his back to the city. I get behind him. I’ve never seen him like this. Never seen the back of his neck go red except that one Tuesday. I’ve got his cock in my hand. It’s already hard. I put the honey on it. He makes a sound I’ve never heard him make. I’m going to hear it for the rest of my life.
He goes down on me first, though. He’s still got honey on his chin. He turns his head and looks up at me. He says “come on, then, don’t keep me waiting, I’ve been twenty years waiting, don’t make it another twenty.”
So I do.
I push into him from behind. He pushes back onto me. It’s tight. So tight. I go in slow. I’ve thought about this for two decades. I’m not going to ruin it by going fast. His body opens up under me the way it always does. Both hands on his hips. I pull him back onto me. He cries out into the fog. The sound carries across the whole eleventh floor of every building in the neighbourhood.
He comes first. Of course he does. He comes back against my cock, hands on the rail, his name in his mouth. I feel his ass clench. I keep going. I’m not going to stop. Then it’s me. I go over the edge inside him. I hold him. I shake. I say his name into his shoulder. I don’t stop moving for a long time.
Then he turns around in the sling of his own forearms and gets his mouth on me. I’m still hard. Still hard from him. His mouth is wet with what came out of me. His hand strokes my shaft. He sucks the honey off the head and swallows it. Looks up at me. Says “twenty years,” like a man putting a number on a debt.
So I’m on him again before either of us has said anything about it. This time I’m not slow. His hole takes me faster than it should. He’s loose and open from the first time. The sound he makes isn’t a word. Just noise. I put my hand over his mouth. He pushes my hand off. He wants me to hear it.
I pull his hips back and thrust. The rail creaks. He shouts into the fog. I tell him I’m going to come. He says “do it, do it, come inside me, Marc, please.” He’s never asked me for anything in twenty years. Not once. Not for the loan in 2009. Not for the lift in 2013. Not when his mother died. He’s asking me for this. I come so hard inside him my knees go. I have to hold him up with both arms or I’d fall off the balcony.
Afterwards his legs go. I have to take his weight. We end up on the floor of the balcony, our coats under us. The concrete’s cold through my jeans. His chest against my chest. Both of us breathing like we’d run somewhere.
His mouth’s sticky with it. I wipe his chin with my thumb. He bites the thumb.
Afterwards we go back inside. He puts the jar on the nightstand. The honey’s gone to sugar. Crystallised solid in the bottom. It’ll never pour again.
The cat gets up off the arm of the sofa and comes to the bed. Sits between us, ancient and blind in one eye. Puts his head down. Purrs like a motorboat. He doesn’t move for an hour.
My knees are bruised from the balcony floor. My jeans are stiff. There’s a smell of honey and sweat on both of us. It’s going to be in that bed for a week. There’s a mark on his throat where I held on. He hasn’t looked at it in the mirror yet. He will. He won’t say anything about it. I’m going to look at it every time he swallows.
The invitation’s still on the fridge. It’s been there three weeks. It hasn’t collected any more dust than the last three weeks. That’s a lie. A kind lie. The kind we’re going to keep telling for a while.
In the morning I’m going to sit down at the kitchen table and write the speech. It’s going to be the best one he’s ever heard. It isn’t going to mention a balcony. He’s going to sit there and drink his coffee and look at the fridge. He’ll know exactly what I didn’t say.
Because the worst part isn’t the wedding. The worst part is that I’ve finally said it. We’ve both said it. It turns out saying it doesn’t change the invitation on the fridge. I still have to be the best man.
I still have to give a speech about how happy I am for them.
I still haven’t RSVP’d.
