Date: Fri, 09 Jan 2004 00:05:45 -0500
From: Writer Boy <writerboy69@hotmail.com>
Subject: boys of summer - part 8

Obligatory warnings and disclaimers:

1) If reading this is in any way illegal where you are or at your age, or
you don't want to read about male/male relationships, go away. You
shouldn't be here.

2) This story isn't based on anyone in particular, alive or dead, so any
resemblance to anybody is unintentional.

Questions and commentary can be sent to "writerboy69@hotmail.com". I enjoy
constructive criticism, praise, and rational discussion. I do not enjoy
flames, and will not tolerate them. Unless I often hear from you and would
recognize your address, please put the story title in the subject, or my
junk mail filter may screen you.

Thanks to everyone who has written so far. To answer a frequent question
from those who are unfamiliar with my other stories, they're called "Brian
and Tommy", "Thieves", "JC's Hitchhiker", "Tangle", and "Rebound", and they
can all be found in the Boybands section, which is a subset of the
Celebrity section, for those of you who have not been there.

***

"Nate, why is there a water bottle under the kitchen table?"

I almost lost it when Sam asked that. The first thought that went through
my mind was that he had to know, that he was asking because he knew exactly
what had started here in the kitchen last night before moving to the house
next door and he was trying, in his playful Sam way, to make a joke out of
it, like he did out of almost everything. I stared at him, my eyes wide, no
words coming out as he leaned slowly from the chair he was sitting in to
pick it up. He set it down on the table, wincing as he clapped his hand to
his forehead.

"Shit," he groaned, his eyes squinted closed. "Shouldn't have bent over."

Looking at Sam, even in the midst of my own mental confusion, I felt so bad
for him.  We'd only been up for a couple of hours, but he was dealing with
the worst hangover I'd ever seen anyone suffer through. None of my friends
in college had ever had it this bad, and Sam never had, either. He and I
drank at these parties every weekend, but not usually like this, not to the
point that either one of us had to be dragged back to the car. Thinking
about it, though, he'd been going at it a little harder for the past couple
weeks. Sam was almost always a generally happy person, but for the past
couple of weeks, whenever we were around other people, Sam had almost been
in overdrive, as brightly perky as a cheerleader on speed. His laugh was
louder, his voice was louder, and he was drinking more. I wanted to ask
what was bothering him, what was going on, but now just wasn't the time.

I was too busy trying to hold all my thoughts in.

It had started last night, after I had stumbled back to the house. I could
barely breathe, choking over a huge lump in my throat as I thought about
what I'd done to Casey. I knew that I was scared about what I'd just done,
scared about what it might mean, and that he'd felt kind of like he'd
crossed a line and pushed me into something I hadn't really wanted or
hadn't been ready for, but there was no excuse for the way I'd treated
him. I'd never treated anyone like that, and I couldn't imagine what he was
feeling. I kept seeing it in my mind, the way he had looked down and away,
the way he hadn't met my eyes.  I realized that, even though I'd only known
him for a short time, I'd never seen him look like that, like he was
ashamed of something, like he felt guilty. I'd only known him to be easily,
gracefully self confident, almost cocky, but nice enough and friendly
enough not to be. I felt like I'd taken a little part of him and crushed it
in my hands.

I tried to rationalize it to myself, tried to tell myself that I hadn't
known what else to do. I had to get out of there, had to get away. That
didn't really work, though.  Every time I thought it I knew that there was
a better way that I could have handled it.  I could have thanked him. I
could have given him a hug, or a handshake, or at least a couple of minutes
of my time instead of just zipping up and running away. I could have
treated him like a human being, like someone that I cared about, because I
did. Even if I barely knew him, I felt like Casey and I had connected, even
before what happened between us last night, and now I felt like I'd broken
that connection, like I'd completely severed that bond. I felt it the
moment that I walked out of the house next door, and I'd fought with it the
whole way back to my house and up to my room. I'd fought with it for hours,
laying on my bed, listening to Sam mumble in his sleep across the room.

The way I'd treated Casey wasn't the only thing that was bothering me, of
course. I also couldn't stop replaying what had happened, the way the whole
thing had gone down, springing up out of nowhere. It had been so
unexpected, so different from the way that I thought it would be, and yet,
somehow, it had also been almost exactly what I'd imagined. Every time I
closed my eyes I saw it again, but worse, so much worse, was that I felt
it. I felt Casey's mouth against mine, the way his tongue had slipped
between my lips, the way that the five o'clock shadow on his chin had
bristled against the same stubble on mine. I felt the crush of his chest
against me, the points of his nipples pressing through our shirts, the
shivers as my own rubbed and slid against us. I felt the ends of his long
hair brushing against my chin and my neck when he'd leaned in, and I could
still trace the path of his hands over my chest and down my stomach, where
he had roamed and rubbed and caressed when he'd gotten down to my bare
skin, ripping my shirt open.

I could still hear the sounds of my buttons tinking across the floor, and
it made my cock so hard in my shorts that I thought I'd explode again,
right there under my sheet.

Which was, of course, another problem. My body was, obviously, completely
in favor of this. I'd never felt this worked up or turned on by anything in
my limited sexual experience. Last night, for the first time ever,
everything had felt natural, and right, and the way it was supposed to, and
I wasn't lying when I'd told Casey that I wanted it. Right then, in the
heat of the moment, I did want it. The problem was that as soon as I'd
started thinking about it, as soon as I'd stopped listening to my body for
a second and stopped thinking with my dick, I was unsure. There were so
many other things to consider, so many questions that had popped up in my
head as soon as it was over, as soon as I'd slowed down to breathe and he'd
leaned up to kiss me. Was Casey my boyfriend now?  Had he been with other
guys? Did this mean anything to him? Was it supposed to mean something to
me? And what else were we supposed to do? Where was it supposed to go from
here? Sure, his body turned me on, and I'd thought about touching it,
feeling it, and yes, even licking it when I'd been in my room jerking off,
but suddenly faced with the possibility of doing it I was uncertain and
confused. There was a difference between thinking and doing, and I was
having a lot of trouble wrapping my mind around that.

If I just thought about touching him, I could tell myself that I was just
curious, that all guys had these kinds of thoughts. Even though the other
day I had come to realize in my own mind that yes, I probably might be gay,
I still wondered if I might just be confused, if it was still something I
could back away from. Even after last night it didn't have to be true. I
could just put it down to two guys fooling around, because, you know, I
hadn't done anything to him. He'd given me a blowjob, but I hadn't
reciprocated, so I hadn't done anything really gay yet. If I wanted to, I
could just write it off as a one time thing, and maybe even blame it on
alcohol. I had, after all, been drinking. I wasn't drunk, but a little bit
in your system could render your judgment questionable, right?  Maybe it
wouldn't have happened if I'd been sober. Maybe the alcohol had slowed my
reactions down, and that's why I hadn't pushed him away when I should
have. As for the rest, well, I was a teenager at the height of my sexual
peak. Anyone touching my dick or rubbing my chest was bound to have me
throwing wood. It was just natural.

Except that I knew that it was all rationalization. I tried all night,
through my broken sleep, tossing and turning and staring at the ceiling, to
convince myself that any of those things were true, but in the end I
couldn't even convince myself. Inside, I knew that I wanted it to happen,
that I'd liked it, and that I'd wanted Casey to be the one who did it.  No
matter how hard I tried to run away from it, my thoughts kept bringing me
back to that, kept reminding me that I'd watched him and then gone inside
to beat off, or that I'd stood at the window while he'd washed the car, or
how I'd gotten a hard on in the pool just from him touching my
shoulder. Even if I hadn't done anything back to him, I knew that I wanted
to. I wasn't sure of exactly what, but I'd wanted to do something, to make
him feel as good as he'd made me.

Realizing that, I felt lost, completely detached from my life, because I
couldn't reconcile the two. It had started as soon as I woke up, squinting
in the bright sunlight creeping around the shades. I looked across the room
at Sam, lying on his side facing me, the sheet fallen down around his waist
with just the top of his boxers creeping out. I knew that Sam was cute,
that he looked good and that he had a good body, but I'd never thought
about him the way I had Casey. Did what I'd done change things between Sam
and I?  Was I supposed to be attracted to him now, too? I was so used to
Sam, to both of us wandering around the house in boxers or one of us being
in the shower while the other one shaved or brushed his teeth in the same
bathroom. I'd seen him naked before lots of times, and he'd seen me, but
was it supposed to mean something different if I was gay? And would it mean
something different to him, too? Would he still feel comfortable changing
in the same room as me, or walking out of the bathroom in a towel, or
talking to me through the shower curtain? If we were playing basketball or
working in the yard or something, would he still feel like it was ok to
take off his shirt around me, or would he worry that I was looking? Would
he think that I'd been looking all along?

Would he even still want to be my friend?

I didn't know what I'd do if I didn't have Sam. Ever since I'd met him I
always felt like I had him to fall back on, like he'd always be there to
prop me up or take my side or sometimes just give me a shoulder to cry on
or a kick in the pants to do something we both knew I should be doing. I
tried to imagine not being able to call him if I had a problem, or just
wanted to hear a familiar voice to talk to, and I couldn't picture it. I
couldn't even get a clear idea in my head of what it would be like. I
couldn't even remember what my life had been like, really, before I met
Sam. He'd always been there, we'd always been there for each other, and I
had no idea of how I would actually face anything completely alone. I tried
to tell myself that I was being ridiculous, that Sam had never said
anything bad about gay people, but there was a difference between "people"
and "Nate". He hadn't been naked with "people", hadn't been hugged by
"people", hadn't grown up with "people" and thought they were one thing but
found out they were something else. What if he thought I'd been lying to
him this whole time? We were best friends, but what if he felt like he
wasn't really ever my friend at all, because he didn't know who I was?

I realized that my hands were shaking, and that I felt almost physically
ill. The idea of Sam not being there for me, of Sam and I no longer
speaking, no longer friends, no longer part of each other's lives, hit me
in the stomach like a bowling ball. My room seemed too small with him right
there across from me, looking innocent and helpless in his sleep, his mouth
open a little and his upper body exposed. He trusted me completely, but
would he if he knew? If he knew what I was and opened his eyes right now to
see me looking at him and thinking about him, what would he do? What would
he think? I felt suddenly like it was written all over my face, like he'd
be able to look right at me and tell, like his eyes would be lasers that
would cut through everything and see the secret that was now hidden inside
me, and I jumped out of bed before anything else could happen. Hastily
grabbing a clean pair of boxers to change into from my dresser, I bolted
down the hall to the bathroom, trying to hurry but not wake him at the same
time.

I closed the bathroom door and leaned against it, shutting my eyes, trying
to make my heart stop pounding, feeling acid bubble up in the back of my
throat. The door was solid and firm against my back, seeming to hold me up,
and when I finally opened my eyes, swallowing hard, I confronted myself in
the mirror.

How could it be possible that I didn't look any different?

Staring into my own eyes, rendered flat by the glass, I walked closer,
until the cold porcelain sink hit me right above the waistband of my
boxers, and I gripped the counter with both hands as I leaned forward. I
was sure what had happened, what I thought I was now, would be written all
over my face. I was sure that there would be some kind of clear change,
branded across my face for everyone to see. When I looked, though, I just
saw me staring back, not different, not changed, not emblazoned with a
scarlet letter on my chest or the word "fag" scrawled across my forehead. I
didn't see any of that. I just saw Nate, the same face I saw every day, the
same messy hair and sleepy morning eyes and shoulders still marked with
little red creases from the sheet I'd been laying on. I couldn't seem to
get it through my head that there was no sign at all of what I thought I
was becoming. I leaned in even closer, my face only inches from the glass
now, as my eyes roamed over my body, trying to find evidence of the changes
in me, the profound shift that had happened overnight.

Surprisingly there were no marks at all. I turned my head from side to
side, looking up and down my neck, but there weren't any bruises, no
hickeys or teeth marks, and that didn't seem possible either. I looked up
and down my chest, turning a little, remembering all the places Casey's
hand and mouth had been, but he hadn't left behind a single trace. I
couldn't see a scratch or a bite or anything. I remembered how firm his
mouth had been, how hot and wet, and all the slick kisses he'd left up and
down my torso, but now, in the morning, standing under the bright lights
over the sink, there was no sign of any of that. It was like the whole
thing had been a dream, another fantasy, except that I knew in my heart
that wasn't true. I could still hear him in my head when I closed my eyes,
and looking at myself in the mirror, letting my eyes roam over my own body,
was just bringing it all back.

"You are so fucking hot," he'd whispered into my ear. I remembered his
breath, warm and quick, seeming to caress me the same way his hands were,
gliding over my ear like they darted down my chest.

"I saw you looking at me," he'd almost groaned, his voice husky and low,
his words asserting themselves even as his cock ground against me through
his shorts, making itself obvious as well.

"You want this, don't you?" he'd asked, but we both knew it wasn't really a
question except in the most rhetorical sense. I had wanted it, badly enough
and completely enough to follow him across the yard from my house to
his. That had been my chance to say no, when he ran out, but I'd run after
him. I'd made a conscious choice to give in, and the outcome had been,
well, so much more than I'd imagined it would be.

I didn't bother turning any hot water on in the shower. I didn't just want
my dick to go down; I wanted it to hibernate. I didn't want my libido to
raise its head again as long as I lived, because it wasn't to be
trusted. All it would do was get me into trouble, the kind of trouble I
wasn't prepared to deal with. By the time the shower was over my hands were
shaking again, but from the cold this time, and I was shivering, my whole
body jumping as my teeth chattered together. My nipples were so hard that
they hurt, and when I shut the water off and the air in the bathroom rushed
over me I felt goosebumps flare up all over my body. I felt like I was
dying, but somehow that was ok, because I'd felt that way all day on the
inside.

Changing into the clean boxers I'd brought with me, I padded back down the
hall to my room to get dressed, seeing Sam's eyes, shaded with his hand,
when I opened the door. I hoped I hadn't woken him, but didn't think I
had. He'd looked pretty much dead to the world when I left for the
bathroom. He was still sprawled on his back on the bed, the sheet still
pushed down, and when he saw me he groaned and covered his eyes with his
arm.

"Morning," he rasped, his voice a croak as I pulled a pair of shorts and a
t-shirt out of my dresser.

"Morning," I answered absently, waiting. Was he going to say anything about
last night?  Did he remember getting home? Did he realize that I had put
him to bed and then vanished for an hour or so, rather than heading for my
own? I kept myself turned away from him, afraid to meet his eyes or see the
look on his face and equally afraid to let him see mine. It didn't matter
what I'd thought in the bathroom, about how he wouldn't really be able to
tell just by looking at me. Sam knew me as well as I knew myself, maybe
even better in some ways, and that meant he might see something that I
didn't see and didn't want him to. "How you feeling?"

"I want to die," he groaned theatrically, rolling over and burying his face
in the pillow.  "Why'd you guys let me drink that much?"

I snickered, risking a glance at his back, smooth and tanned. He wasn't
looking at me, so I felt a little safer. As long as he wasn't looking, I
might be able to pretend that everything was ok.

"Let you?" I asked, still chuckling. "I'm not the one who was king of the
assholes."

"I wasn't king," Sam answered sullenly, but I could hear that he was
smiling. "I was president."

He started to get out of bed, raising his arms to a partial push up
position, but immediately dropped back down, groaning again.

"Oh, my God," he whimpered pathetically. "I'm never, ever drinking again."

"OK," I said, shrugging into my shirt.

"I mean it," he argued through the pillow. "Never."

"I wasn't arguing with you," I pointed out, slipping on a pair of sandals.

"Whatever," he groaned again. Normally I would say that he was just being a
drama queen, and that he couldn't possibly really be in as much pain and
miserable agony as it sounded, but he had been really, really drunk last
night.

"What time do you have to be at work?" I asked, glancing at my alarm clock.
We'd managed to sleep in past eleven, but that wasn't really much when you
figured that we'd gotten back after midnight.

"Four," he answered, still not lifting his head from the pillow. I began to
wonder if he was trying to smother himself to end the hangover.

"You have about three and a half hours, then," I said, shaking my
head. "I'm going downstairs to forage for breakfast.

Sam groaned, his body curling a little.

"No food," he mumbled.

"I didn't say you had to eat any," I said, fighting the urge to laugh
again.  If our friends could see him now, or that girlfriend of his, all
curled up in bed like a little helpless child, they'd be shrieking with
laughter and he'd be embarrassed as hell. He trusted me enough to show this
side of himself, though, and all the laughter dried up inside me as I
thought again about what would happen if he found out about me. I turned
away quickly, pulling the door closed behind me as I spoke. "I'll be
downstairs if you need me."

In the same way that I'd bolted for the bathroom, I left my bedroom so fast
it felt like I was running away. The feeling wasn't really all that far
from the truth.  Going downstairs, though, did nothing to help take my mind
off my issues. For one thing, it was too close to the scene of the
crime. When I saw the kitchen at the end of the hall, the open doorway
seemed to yawn, inviting me to come down and relive it, to see the fridge
where I'd been kissed, the door I'd run out through, the mustard bottle
that had poked me in the back. I turned away, walking into the living room,
shaking my head and trying to catch my breath, and that's where I ran into
the second problem. On wall of the living room was all photographs, and
rather than confronting myself in the mirror or Sam in my bedroom, my
parents were staring at me, their smiles wide and their eyes, so flat in
pictures, seeming to follow me around the room.

My feet carried me into the room against my will, my eyes roaming the wall
that documented my life and my family. My parents, as I've said before,
hadn't planned on having kids, and had actually assumed that they weren't
going to, when suddenly there I was. In response, they had a wall in the
living room that relentlessly chronicled my development from birth until
now. Here I was at four, standing on the front steps in my Spider-Man
Halloween costume, plastic mask on my face and an orange pumpkin bucket in
one hand while I held my mom's hand with the other. Over here was an even
younger picture of my second birthday, with me in a high chair staring wide
eyed at a cake shaped like a cat with candles, morbidly enough, stuck in
the eyes. How that hadn't sent me into some kind of therapy would probably
always be one of life's mysteries. Over here was my first day of school,
and next to it my first day of junior high, and then high school.  Here I
was when I won my first race at a swim meet, smiling brilliantly in a tiny
swimsuit, still wet from the pool. Christmas pictures, reindeer sweaters
and bows stuck to my head, were mixed in with high school awards
banquets. My prom picture with the girl who gave me a handjob afterward in
someone's hot tub at a party hung next to one of me crossing the stage at
my high school graduation, shaking the principal's hand as I accepted the
rolled up scroll that wasn't really a diploma, since they mailed those
later.  Across the top of the wall, marching in succession, were my school
pictures, one for each year in a series of identical frames.

What drew my eyes the most, though, were the family shots. I couldn't help
looking at the pictures of my parents and I, of the three of us as a unit,
and when I did, snippets of discussions kept running through my mind like
soundbites on the news. I remembered when the two of them, in their odd
way, had sat me down after dinner when I was ten to explain what sex was, a
discussion that had included penises and vaginas but not penises and
penises. I remembered being younger and asking where I would live when I
grew up and got married, because I'd thought my wife and I would just keep
my bedroom upstairs. My mother, doing her best to act as serious as I was,
had carefully explained that grownups usually lived in houses of their own,
and that I would even if I didn't have a wife, but that discussion never
covered where I would live if I had a boyfriend. None of our discussions
had ever ventured into that kind of territory.

When I looked at the wall, I felt the same way I had upstairs, but a
thousand times stronger. I'd lived my whole life like this, as a boy who
dated girls, and was interested in girls, and was going to marry one. I'd
been like everyone else, had done everything I was supposed to, and my
parents had loved me, but had it been for that? Had they loved me because
of who I was, or who they thought I was? Would they still love me if I told
them that underneath it all I was different? Would they still look at me
and see the same person in these pictures? Would they still see their
little boy, the one with the Halloween mask and the smile and the cake and
the trophies, or would they see something ugly, something they hadn't
imagined could have been hiding inside their family all along?  Would they
still know who I was when I couldn't even answer that question?

"Nate?" Sam asked from behind me, startling me. "What are you doing?"

"Nothing," I answered quickly, swallowing that giant lump in my throat
again. It was so big I expected to look down and see a giant football sized
lump sticking out of the middle of my chest.

"I thought you were going to eat," Sam said, his voice low and tired
sounding. He must have gotten up right after I left the room, and hadn't
showered yet.

"Yeah, I just, I don't know," I answered, shrugging. I didn't know what I
was doing, and couldn't explain it.

"Space cadet," Sam mumbled, and began walking down the hall. I turned,
following him, feeling safe looking at his back. Like me, he'd pulled on a
pair of shorts and a t-shirt, but he was padding barefoot down the
hall. Walking into the kitchen, he pulled out a chair and slumped into it,
leaning forward to rest his head on his folded arms, looking down.  That
was when he saw the bottle on the floor and asked me about it, and he
winced about not bending over as my mouth went completely dry and I stared
wordlessly at the incriminating plastic container.

Right there, in the middle of the table, only a few feet from the scene of
my crime, was a water bottle that I must have dropped when Casey kissed
me. I remembered going to the refrigerator to get water, and having the
door open, and him being right there, right against me, so damn close, and
I must have dropped the bottle and immediately forgotten about it. Shocking
the hell out of me, I managed to answer him.

"I guess I must have dropped it," I almost whispered. Sam just shook his
head.

For the next few hours we didn't really do anything that important, just
crashed in the living room and watched television while Sam tried to
rehydrate himself, telling me over and over that the best hangover cure in
the world was water. I was more of a fan of orange juice, myself, but
couldn't summon up the energy to argue with him.  He didn't seem to notice,
apparently assuming that I was suffering the same thing that he was, and I
didn't do anything to dispel the idea. Instead, it was easier to just
mindlessly flip channels, watching a game for a little while, then part of
a movie, then some Saturday Night Live reruns on the comedy channel. We
pigged out on junkfood after a while, eating our way through a couple of
bags of chips and almost a whole box of little snack cakes as Sam lay on
the couch and I leaned back in the recliner with my feet up. Finally it was
time for him to go shower and get ready for his shift, and he left me alone
in the living room.

I couldn't really summon up any interest in the television, and the shows
seemed a lot less entertaining without Sam there to make his little side
comments and stupid jokes. I turned off the television and stood, pacing
the floor as my feet carried me to the window.  I stared across the yard at
the Beckers' house and wondered what Casey was doing. At night, with the
lights on over there, you could see right in, but during the day all the
windows showed was the reflection of the sky. The house, like the man
inside, was a mystery. Last night obviously hadn't been his first time, so
I was sure he wasn't feeling the same things that I was, the same worries
and fears. I had no idea what his parents were like, if he worried about
disappointing them or not. I didn't know if he had a best friend back home,
or even where back home actually was.

Staring out the windows, though, I realized that he must have thought these
things once.  He must have, like me, had a first time, and had to think
about what it meant. Maybe I could go over there and talk to him. Maybe
together we could figure this out, maybe decide if this had been a one time
thing or if this was what I really, truly wanted, and what it might
mean. He'd be able to help me with all of this, to explain to me what it
was like, what I could expect, and where I was going from here.

If he would still talk to me after the way I'd treated him. Damn it, I was
a total asshole. I wouldn't be surprised if he slammed the door in my face
and didn't talk to me again, ever.

My musings were interrupted by Sam bounding down the stairs, apparently
refreshed by his shower.

"I'm on 'til midnight," he said, heading for the garage to get his bike.
"I'll let myself in later?"

"Yeah," I said, shrugging. We'd planned on him staying over all weekend,
and he had his own key. "I might be asleep."

"I understand," he said, shaking his head. "I'll be slamming Mountain Dew
all night just to stay awake."

He gave me a quick pat on the shoulder, pulling on his sunglasses as he
squinted, and then he headed off down the sidewalk as I stood on my porch
and watched him leave.  Turning back toward the door, I debated a minute,
but then walked down the front steps and over to the Beckers' house, where
I knocked once on the door, lightly, half of me hoping that Casey would
answer and the other half hoping that he had gone out for the day and
wouldn't be home. I waited for a minute, wondering if I should knock again,
and decided that things would only be worse if I put it off. As I raised my
hand to knock on the door a second time, Casey opened it, and I found
myself staring into his dark blue eyes.

He didn't look mad, and I almost breathed a sigh of relief as my eyes slid
over his strong jaw and high, firm cheekbones. He didn't really look happy
to see me, either, though.  Instead his face was kind of blank, and we
faced each other in the doorway in almost identical outfits, only a few
inches apart physically but feeling much further away from each
other. Seeing him in the flesh, right there, I suddenly wanted to say so
many things, to tell him that I was sorry, that I hadn't intended to hurt
him, that I'd been scared and hadn't known what to do and just couldn't
deal with any of it. I wanted to tell him that I needed help, that I needed
to talk to him, that I needed for things to be ok between us and that his
feelings were important to me. I wanted to tell him that I didn't usually
treat people that way, and that I didn't know how to say sorry but that I'd
do my best to make it up to him if I could.

None of those words came out, though.

"Can I talk to you?" was the best I could do.

Wordlessly he stepped aside and held the door open for me.

***

Sorry for the long delay. December was very busy. Oh, and the story is to
be continued, hopefully somewhat faster than this time.