They lay in bed in the dark. Streetlight here was duller or the night was darker; they had opened the window for the breeze, Ronny lying on top of Ben, as close as if they were still in Ronny’s room on his single bed. Ben said, “Man, I was feeling so fucking crazy that last night I was here. I was afraid I was going to hurt somebody. I was up here with Jen, I couldn’t get away from her.”

“You had Jen up here?”

“She was staying the night.”

“Well, I guess I should have known.”

“Hey.”

“We’ll change the sheets tomorrow,” Ronny said.

“You little bitch.”

“That’s me.”

Ben chuckled, pulled Ronny against him. “That really made you jealous.”

Ronny relaxed, knowing he had to, or risk a fight. “I’m all right.”

“You know I’m not going to say I’m sorry.”

Ronny stayed still, where he was, near the stubbled cheek and ear and dark curls.

“Can’t you give me a little smirk?”

Ronny looked at him.

“That’s better.” Ben kissed him, opened him up, brought their bodies together, drawn down into each other, nothing had changed. Ronny tried not to expect anything at all and found himself soon enough as lost as before in the sensation, Ben gentle for longer than ever, which only made the turn to something fiercer more acute, more like a heartache that pierced them both at the same moment. Suddenly in the double bed they learned economy and hardly needed to move. Pleasure can burn, can sting, can cool, can heat, can do everything at once, and then soothe, and then rush forward, almost there, and almost there, as many times as it can be pressed, until there comes an end. They had that thought again, together and at the same time, that this was the thing they were, not what they were doing but what they were seeing, that what they contained was a big space, open, clean, belonging to no one else. Free.

“That’s ending up, for you,” Ben said in Ronny’s ear, breathing heavily for the first time.

“Is that what you call a gut check?”

Ben laughed. “Probably so, from your point of view.”

They listened to each other for a while. Ronny felt the day come down on him some, the length of it, all that had happened. Ben murmured something, rolled off Ronny, rubbed his cheek with a hand. “I got this impulse to say something stupid myself,” Ben said. “What do you know?”

“Yeah?”

“You don’t need me to, do you?”

Ronny shook his head. “Pretty much everything I need is right here already.”

“That’s my boy.”

“We should go to sleep.”

Ben grunted, rolled onto his back. “If you wake up, you know what to start doing,” he said.

“Yes, boss. You want me to wake you up first?”

“No. Let it be a surprise.”

Nina

BEN SLID OUT OF BED BEFORE Ronny, who watched him stumble downstairs after pulling on a pair of pajama bottoms that really didn’t look like he’d slept in them at all. Moving like he wanted to be quiet. Big as he was, he could step light. Ronny drowsed awhile, got up a few minutes later and pulled on jeans and shirt, finding a pair of socks for his cold feet.