like hot sauce and barbecue pork skins with a hollin’ two year old.”
“You have me beat,” Scott laughed. “What part of Florida?”
“Tallahassee. I figured it was time for a change o’scenery.”
“I thought I sensed a Southern accent.”
“So where you from?” I asked.
“Here, New York.”
“Manhattan?”
“Queens, actually. Far Rockaway. My mother and brother live there. I was teaching in Connecticut before coming back here to get my PhD in economics.”
I lied and said I was a media communications major. It sounded more practical than creative writing. Scott and I didn’t wind down for bed until four that morning. The week had taken its pound of flesh out of the both of us with exhausting bus and car rides and the excitement of new digs.That first night, Scott wore a wife beater that showed off his freckled arms. It was the first time I’d slept in close proximity of someone else without sex involved.
Weeks passed. We were well into the semester before our relationship soured. Because of the demands of his classes, Scott was always stressed. He had grown mean and easily annoyed, so I started to avoid him. My classes met only Tuesday and Wednesday evenings. I job hunted by day and hopped from bar to club most nights while Scott was cooped up with his nose in a book. I’d get home and he’d be asleep at his desk, drooling in the crease of his reading. The place was a fucking wreck when I came in from class one night.
“What the hell is this? Wha’choo doin’?”
Scott never turned around to look at me, but remained motionless at his desk.
“Excuse me?”
“You heard me, man. Why all your clothes out in the floor like this?”
“I was looking for something.”
“Yeah, but damn, you ain’t have to tear up the place.”
“I’ll clean it up.”
“No shit, you go’n clean this up. What’s your problem?”
“I said I’ll clean it up!”
Scott stormed past me in a rage, out the door. It was scary to see him act a fool like that. It took me the rest of that night to straighten up, to put shit back in order. I looked at the clock sitting on the sill of my window. With its devastating view of Ground Zero, you could still smell the ashes. It was a little after four in the morning when he undressed for bed. I watched with squinted eyes as he stripped. He was lean and lithe, his chest peppered with freckles, his shapely butt in boxers. My dick stiffened.
“Where’d you go?”
“For a walk around the Seaport,” he said.
“You okay?”
“Yeah. Sorry about the mess.”
“Don’t worry ’bout it.”
That night we talked until our eyes ached for sleep mostly about his mom, who was pretty sick and doted on his deadbeat brother but treated Scott as if he were invisible.
Scott eventually slept, oblivious to the clatter of battered, smoldering steel being hauled. I lay awake, settling my sleepy eyes on Scott’s brawny legs hanging limp off the side of his bunk. I longed to shrimp his perfect, pedicured toes, kiss the soft, pink heels of his feet, worship the arches. I slid my hands down into the warmth of my pajama bottoms imagining of Scott’s dick between my lips. I studied him as he tossed and turned. I saw a single hand ease its way down into his underwear. I kept pace with him until I came.
That next morning, the sound of the shower woke me. Scott’s clothes were lying on his bunk. The dorm room smelled of freshly brewed coffee. There was a note attached to the fridge that read : Help yourself , with an arrow pointing to the coffee maker. It wasn’t like him to do something nice. I figured he was apologizing for the mess he made of the place.
I poured myself some coffee and sat at my desk as it cooled to proofread a couple of poems.
As I read, I heard the sudden silence of the shower turning off. Steam spirited