You & Me

by Tal Bauer

Landon dropped casual touches easily, and I hadn’t been touched, other than a handshake, for three years. Landon’s shoulder squeezes and knee brushes burned me like a brand. They were moments where, for a single second, I wasn’t alone in the world. I existed. I was a person, and another person’s warmth reached me.

“Come back tomorrow for the game and I’ll show you exactly how I want to use you.” Landon went neon maroon as soon as the words left his lips. His ears darkened, and a flush bloomed over his cheeks. He stiffened, shifted away, groaning as he buried his head in his hands. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean, at all—” I howled. Doubled over, bursting with deep-down-in-my-belly laughs. When was the last time I’d really laughed? “Your face! Landon!”

It was like Landon could read my mind. Or maybe I wasn’t that great at hiding what was going on inside me. Did I look desperate for an escape already? I, like my son, wasn’t a social creature. Big gatherings made me find corners to escape to. This, with Landon, was what I always liked best: finding someone to connect to and exploring each other’s hidden diamond veins.

“I’m here,” I said, coming up behind him. It was everything I could do to smother my grin as I held out my hands. “And I am ready to be used the way you want to.” The back of his neck flushed. He spun on his knees, and his face sprinted right through the entire magenta spectrum as he peered up at me. “I’m never going to escape that one, am I?”

“Did you go with anyone?” Landon twirled his soda. “No. I don’t date much.” “No? A guy like you? I figured you’d be beating the men off with sticks in both hands.”

dude u r so not straight 😭😭😭😭

He pushed against my hip with his palm, and his thumb lingered briefly over the waistband of my jeans. I should have put on a belt. He was wearing a belt. Wasn’t that fashion etiquette? Belt and shoes must match. I’d pulled on my boots—which I dug out of a box in the back of my closet thanks to Landon—but I’d skipped the belt. I should look nicer. Especially out with Landon.

Fellas, is it gay to dress up for you best friend?

The last thing I saw before I drove away was his smile. It stayed with me the whole way home.

How do fathers and sons speak gently without words? I ran my hand over the clean counter.

I didn’t know how to get closer to my son, but I was pretty sure I knew how to push him away forever.

A sketch wouldn’t be able to hold this man, I thought. He’d burst right out of the page if I tried.

“Landon’s never brought a guy around,” she said carefully. “He doesn’t date much. I don’t think he’s ever found a man who fits with him in all the right ways.” She turned to me and held my stare as she tossed her trash into my bag. “He’s a special guy, and he needs someone equally special to be with.” “No argument from me.” Annie laughed, though I didn’t get the joke.

“This man is so blind and so gay,” Annie chants inside her head 💀

He got under my skin in all the best ways. I wasn’t an effusive man by nature. I had an artist’s distance from the world, observing rather than participating. Most of the time, it seemed like there was cling film between me and everyone else, or like I was shouting through water to try to communicate. I never knew what to say or what to do, so instead, I kept my mouth shut, but with Landon… He was the easiest person to be around that I’d ever met. He’d burrowed into my life and set himself up like he had always been a part of my world. We were a puzzle made of two pieces, and when we fit together, all the sharp edges of life seemed squared off, blunted.

I couldn’t begin to make sense of the words before me. My mind was too captivated by the way the candlelight from our table bounced off Landon’s features. How the glow caressed his skin, carved his cheek and his jaw out of russet and gold. Light and dark and beauty played tag with each other. My hands itched for a pencil and a pad of paper.

My fingers curled. I needed to seize these moments, freeze time until I could capture the shape of his smile by candlelight on paper. The way his eyes gleamed. The little dimple in his chin and his right cheek.

“I still want to know more about you. Tell me about your art?” “I want to draw you right now.” The words tumbled out of me. “Exactly this moment, exactly where you are.”

“And you want to draw me?” Confusion rippled across his forehead. “I want to try, but I don’t think I can capture everything that you are. I could only capture parts of you. If I could sketch you right this moment, I’d come close.”

“You’re classically handsome. You have the face that all men want,” I said, grinning at him. “But there’s so much more to you. Your looks would be empty on anyone else. It’s who you are that fills everything in.”

“I can see your dedication in the lines of your face. Your work ethic in the cut of your jaw. I know you love life when I see you smile, and even when you’re not smiling, the laugh lines show you’d rather be. I know you’re a father when I look into your eyes, and I know you’re a good one when I see those eyes are kind. When you’re you, you light up, and all these different parts of you combine, and everything that you are bursts free. You’re like color exploding in a black-and-white world.”

Landon’s gaze dropped to my forearm. He reached out and traced the curling lines of waves breaking around my forearm. Goosebumps rose in the wake of his finger. “Tell me about this?”

Was I chasing after him into that unknown? Or was I caught forever outside the page, Landon only half-seen, half-discovered? Where did the rest of the picture lead?

My brain had been pumping away since the moment I’d met Landon. At 3:41 a.m., I popped awake in Landon’s guest bedroom and had my big, fat, fucking realization. I was head over heels for Landon Larsen. I craved everything about him. And I was absolutely free-falling for him.

ya think? 💀

But all those men knew they liked other men long before they’d come out in their forties or fifties. They weren’t huddled under a blanket in the middle of the night trying to google what it meant that they were imagining kissing their best friend out of the blue.

Adrenaline pounded through me, swam in my veins, and drenched my muscles. Don’t do anything. I’d never been this gone for anyone, had never yearned, craved, or agonized over anyone in my life like I was for Landon. Don’t jeopardize this.

He strode away, disappearing toward his house. I watched him go, and all the color in my world bled away.

But another part of me, a bigger part of me, is ready to fling myself off this cliff and into your arms. I want to be with you. And—” I said, leaning in and kissing him when he opened his mouth to protest. “I want to know myself. I want to do what you did. Open myself up and explore everything that I am.” “What if you don’t like what you find?” “Impossible. I already know I’m going to find you. You’re a part of me somehow. I can feel it.”

I slung my arm over the back of Emmet’s chair and squeezed his shoulder. He dipped his head against my forearm, the closest we’d come to a hug since he was in fifth grade.

I passed Emmet on the sideline and shot him a smile. He beamed, all his joy radiating at me for three perfect seconds. I heard one of his teammates ask, “Your dad volunteers?” and Emmet say, “Yeah, man, he’s here every week.”

<333

Were parents and children ever truly parted? Or were our lives braided together, he and I linked always, no matter what? Cut the braid that bound us and we may unravel, but the frayed spots where we’d spent years together would always be inside our souls.

“He does it all to show his dad that he loves him,” he’d mumbled. “To try and prove to a ghost that he’s a son his dad can finally really love.” He’d shrugged and sunk into himself, hunched his spine, clenched his fork until his knuckles went white. “His dad should have told him he didn’t need to prove anything at all and that he was perfect exactly as he was.”

Annie started to talk about us like a matched set. Luke and Landon, Landon and Luke. Always together. Never apart. The way I wanted it to be.

He flung his helmet to the ground three steps in front me. He threw his arms wide, like he was about to tackle me. He stutter-stepped, came to a sudden, reality-jerking stop a hairsbreadth from my face, and wrapped me into a bone-crushing hug. “Dad,” he shouted into my neck. “Dad…” The third time, it was a sob. He crumpled into me, weeping as he chanted, “Dad, Dad, Dad.” My lips moved against his sweat-drenched hair and his cheek as I repeated that I loved him, that I was proud of him, that he was amazing, perfect, and the best—the absolute best—thing that ever happened to me. I held him like I could merge myself with him and share this joy and this agony, all the ricocheting emotions inside him.

I tipped my head against Landon’s, my heart and soul too full to hold on to this moment any longer. Everything was brimming over, everything was perfect, with all three of the men I loved more than life itself in my arms. This is how we were meant to be. This is what our life was meant to be. Family.

“Is that okay?” Fear wrapped around my heart like a lasso. After all this time, was— Bowen’s eyes were wet when he looked up, but he was beaming. “Yeah, that’s okay. It’s what I’ve always wanted for my dad.” He laughed, like he couldn’t keep his happiness inside. His eyes were shining. “And I want it to be you. I really want it to be you.”

armor. Every lesson I learned in this life began at your feet, and all the best parts of me come from you and your example. My life has been blessed by your love. I am the man I am today because of your support, and your guidance, and your unwavering, undying belief in the best of me. You cradled my dreams in your heart and you taught me that nothing was out of reach. There is no dream too big in my life, no hope that I can’t wrap my arms around—”

Bowen’s voice shook as he pressed on. “The joy you brought me in these first eighteen years of my life is immeasurable. I can only hope I have brought half as much joy to you in your life. Dad, I have known you as a boy and loved you like a father, and now, I will spend the rest of my life knowing you as a man, and loving you, and learning from you still, because you are my best and closest friend. And you always will be.”

“We are a family,” Landon said. Bowen and Emmet nodded. “We always have been.” I kissed Landon’s cheek. “We just needed to find each other.”